# Guidelines for reusing abstractions As GitLab has grown, different patterns emerged across the codebase. Service classes, serializers, and presenters are just a few. These patterns made it easy to reuse code, but at the same time make it easy to accidentally reuse the wrong abstraction in a particular place. ## Why these guidelines are necessary Code reuse is good, but sometimes this can lead to shoehorning the wrong abstraction into a particular use case. This in turn can have a negative impact on maintainability, the ability to easily debug problems, or even performance. An example would be to use `ProjectsFinder` in `IssuesFinder` to limit issues to those belonging to a set of projects. While initially this may seem like a good idea, both classes provide a very high level interface with very little control. This means that `IssuesFinder` may not be able to produce a better optimised database query, as a large portion of the query is controlled by the internals of `ProjectsFinder`. To work around this problem, you would use the same code used by `ProjectsFinder`, instead of using `ProjectsFinder` itself directly. This allows you to compose your behaviour better, giving you more control over the behaviour of the code. To illustrate, consider the following code from `IssuableFinder#projects`: ```ruby return @projects = project if project? projects = if current_user && params[:authorized_only].presence && !current_user_related? current_user.authorized_projects elsif group finder_options = { include_subgroups: params[:include_subgroups], only_owned: true } GroupProjectsFinder.new(group: group, current_user: current_user, options: finder_options).execute else ProjectsFinder.new(current_user: current_user).execute end @projects = projects.with_feature_available_for_user(klass, current_user).reorder(nil) ``` Here we determine what projects to scope our data to, using three different approaches. When a group is specified, we use `GroupProjectsFinder` to retrieve all the projects of that group. On the surface this seems harmless: it is easy to use, and we only need two lines of code. In reality, things can get hairy very quickly. For example, the query produced by `GroupProjectsFinder` may start out simple. Over time more and more functionality is added to this (high level) interface. Instead of _only_ affecting the cases where this is necessary, it may also start affecting `IssuableFinder` in a negative way. For example, the query produced by `GroupProjectsFinder` may include unnecessary conditions. Since we're using a finder here, we can't easily opt-out of that behaviour. We could add options to do so, but then we'd need as many options as we have features. Every option adds two code paths, which means that for four features we have to cover 8 different code paths. A much more reliable (and pleasant) way of dealing with this, is to simply use the underlying bits that make up `GroupProjectsFinder` directly. This means we may need a little bit more code in `IssuableFinder`, but it also gives us much more control and certainty. This means we might end up with something like this: ```ruby return @projects = project if project? projects = if current_user && params[:authorized_only].presence && !current_user_related? current_user.authorized_projects elsif group current_user .owned_groups(subgroups: params[:include_subgroups]) .projects .any_additional_method_calls .that_might_be_necessary else current_user .projects_visible_to_user .any_additional_method_calls .that_might_be_necessary end @projects = projects.with_feature_available_for_user(klass, current_user).reorder(nil) ``` This is just a sketch, but it shows the general idea: we would use whatever the `GroupProjectsFinder` and `ProjectsFinder` finders use under the hoods. ## End goal The guidelines in this document are meant to foster _better_ code reuse, by clearly defining what can be reused where, and what to do when you can not reuse something. Clearly separating abstractions makes it harder to use the wrong one, makes it easier to debug the code, and (hopefully) results in fewer performance problems. ## Abstractions Now let's take a look at the various abstraction levels available, and what they can (or cannot) reuse. For this we can use the following table, which defines the various abstractions and what they can (not) reuse: | Abstraction | Service classes | Finders | Presenters | Serializers | Model instance method | Model class methods | Active Record | Worker |:-----------------------|:-----------------|:---------|:------------|:--------------|:------------------------|:----------------------|:----------------|:-------- | Controller | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Service class | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | Finder | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | Presenter | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | Serializer | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | Model class method | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Model instance method | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Worker | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | Yes ### Controllers Everything in `app/controllers`. Controllers should not do much work on their own, instead they simply pass input to other classes and present the results. ### Grape endpoint Everything in `lib/api`. ### Service classes Everything that resides in `app/services`. ### Finders Everything in `app/finders`, typically used for retrieving data from a database. Finders can not reuse other finders in an attempt to better control the SQL queries they produce. ### Presenters Everything in `app/presenters`, used for exposing complex data to a Rails view, without having to create many instance variables. ### Serializers Everything in `app/serializers`, used for presenting the response to a request, typically in JSON. ### Model class methods These are class methods defined by _GitLab itself_, including the following methods provided by Active Record: - `find` - `find_by_id` - `delete_all` - `destroy` - `destroy_all` Any other methods such as `find_by(some_column: X)` are not included, and instead fall under the "Active Record" abstraction. ### Model instance methods Instance methods defined on Active Record models by _GitLab itself_. Methods provided by Active Record are not included, except for the following methods: - `save` - `update` - `destroy` - `delete` ### Active Record The API provided by Active Record itself, such as the `where` method, `save`, `delete_all`, etc. ### Worker Everything in `app/workers`. The scheduling of Sidekiq jobs using `SomeWorker.perform_async`, `perform_in`, etc. Directly invoking a worker using `SomeWorker.new.perform` should be avoided at all times in application code, though this is fine to use in tests.