Reviewing What We’ve Done So Far

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At this point we’ve actually got a simple, but fully functional “Create” application. It doesn’t have anything more than an account number and a name, but to get this far we had to put together a lot of moving parts.

This is probably a good time to pause, and look at what we’ve done.

We’ve Built on a Framework

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If you’ve followed along this far, then the value of building on a framework should be readily apparent.

Here are some of the things it does for us:

We Can Use Unit Tests

Because we now have a pretty clear dividing line between the Reactive JavaFX code and the rest of our application, it’s now clear that some of our code is just plain old Java code and there’s nothing special about it. That means that we can test it, and in turn that means that we should test it.

Our GUI is Just the GUI

There’s no business logic in our GUI, it’s just layout.

Coupling is Minimized

Within the framework, there’s no dependency between the View and the Interactor. They both deal with the Model, but don’t even know of the existence of each other. Within our View, the various screen widgets have virtually no knowledge of one another.

Everything is Easy to Find

There’s no need to go looking for code. You won’t find business rules in the View or the Model, they’re all in the Interactor.

Everything is Small

No 1000 line classes here. Keeping everything broken up into discrete parts means that all of the parts stay small.

Other Important Ideas

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Reactive Programming

Through this processes, we’ve seen how Reactive programming concepts make it easier to separate our components without having to worry about how they are going to be used. Having a synchronized data object holding our application state enables this.

Background Threads

We’ve learned about the importance of keeping blocking operations off the FXAT, and how to use Task to start up a process that runs on a background thread. We’ve also learned how to set up our GUI before a background task starts, and how to trigger the GUI to respond to the completion of a background task.

Single Responsibility Principle

We looked at how a method should only be directly responsible for a single thing and how, by delegating to other methods our code stays simple and easy to read.

Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY)

We’ve seen that this is the most important principle for dealing with the boilerplate code that bog down a JavaFX layout. As we go on, we’ll see this become even more important.

GUI Validation

We’ve applied validation to our GUI to enforce business rules built by the Interactor and embedded into the Model.

Simulated Database and Access

We’ve seen how to simulate a database and connect it to our Interactor through a Broker and a DAO. We’ve dealt with the issues that latency can have when testing these components.

Handling Exceptions

We’ve learned about the difference between checked and unchecked exceptions and how to deal with checked exceptions that happen deep down a chain of method calls. We learned how to transform an exceptions into an action result, and integrate it into our UX.

Moving On From Here

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Our next steps are going to build on what we’ve done so far:

Add Another Field

We’ll add a “Phone Number” field to the screen so that we can see how the feature build cuts all the way through the application from GUI to the database.

Clean Up the GUI

It’s going to become clear that our GUI is a bit ugly when we add another field. In the process of cleaning up the GUI, we’ll see how our layout has become cluttered with stuff that isn’t strictly…layout. We’ll clean that up and see how an even nicer looking GUI can actually take up much less code in our ViewBuilder.

Split the Name

We’ll divide the “name” field up into three parts including a “salutation” field that will let us use a ComboBox.

Add the Rest of the Fields

We’ll add a bunch of address fields to our screen, and then down through to our database.

Add a “Retrieve” Function

Finally, we’ll be ready to add the next CRUD function, “Retrieve”. Without “Retrieve” we can’t do “Update” or “Delete”