I am working on a backend and try to implement CQRS patterns.
I'm pretty clear about events, but sometimes struggle with commands.
I've seen that commands are requested by users, or example ChangePasswordCommand. However in implementation level user is just calling an endpoint, handled by some controller.
I can inject an UserService to my controller, which will handle domain logic and this is how basic tutorials do (I use Nest.js). However I feel that maybe this is where I should use command - so should I execute command ChangePasswordCommand in my controller and then domain module will handle it?
Important thing is that I need return value from the command, which is not a problem from implementation perspective, but it doesn't look good in terms of CQRS - I should ADD and GET at the same time.
Or maybe the last option is to execute the command in controller and then emit an event (PasswordChangedEvent) in command handler. Next, wait till event comes back and return the value in controller.
This last option seems quite good to me, but I have problems with clear implementation inside request lifecycle.
I base on
https://docs.nestjs.com/recipes/cqrs
While the answer by #cperson is technically correct, I would like to add a few nuances to it.
First something that may not be clear from the answer description where it advises to "emit an event (PasswordChangedEvent) in command handler". This is what I would prefer as well, but watch out:
The Command is part of the infrastructure layer, and the Event is part of the domain.
So from the command you should trigger code on the AggregateRoot that emits the event.
This can be done with mergeObjectContext or eventBus.publish (see the NestJS docs).
Events can be applied from other domain objects, but the aggregate usually is the emitter (upon commit).
The other point I wanted to address is that an event-sourced architecture is assumed, i.e. applying CQRS/ES. While CQRS is often used in combination with Event Sourcing there is nothing that prescribes doing so. Event Sourcing can give additional advantages, but also comes with significant added complexity. You should carefully weigh the pros and cons of having ES.
In many cases you do not need Event Sourcing. Having just CQRS already gives you a lot of benefits, such as having your domain / bounded contexts well-contained. Separation between reads and writes, single-responsibility commands + queries (more SOLID in general), cleaner architecture, etc. On a higher level it is easier to shift focus from 'how do I implement this (CRUD-wise)?', to 'how do these user requirements fit in the domain model?'.
Without ES you can have a single relational database and e.g. persist using TypeORM. You can persist events, but it is not needed. In many scenario's you can avoid the eventual consistency where clients need to subscribe to events (maybe you just use them to drive saga's and update read-side views/projections).
You can always start with just CQRS and add Event Sourcing later, when the need arises.
As your architecture evolves, you may find that you require a command bus if you are using Processes/Sagas to manage workflows and inter-aggregate communication. If and when that is the case, it will naturally make sense to use that bus for all commands.
The following is the method I would prefer:
execute the command in controller and then emit an event (PasswordChangedEvent) in command handler. Next, wait till event comes back and return the value in controller.
As for implementation details, in .NET, we use a SignalR websockets service that will read the event bus (where all events are published) and will forward events to clients that have subscribed to them.
In this case, the workflow would be:
The user posts to the controller.
The controller appends the command to the command bus.
The controller returns an ID identifying the command.
The client (browser client) subscribes to events relating to this command.
The command is received by the domain service and handled. An event is emitted to the event store.
The event is published to the event bus.
The event listener subscription service receives the event, finds the subscription, and sends the event to the client.
The client receives the event and notifies the user.
Related
So I was watching this video Event Sourcing You are doing it wrong by David Schmitz at the 15:17 he was talking about eventual consistency in event-sourcing. At first, I was like oh I got it so this is why CQRS is helpful with Event-sourcing because we can validate this things through command model before publishing an event right? but after I did a few research I was wrong. So I wonder why command model even exists since we can just retrieve the request body (suppose it's http request) put some business logic and then publish event.
With Event Sourcing we store events. A model exists in your application to support applying your business logic before deciding to save new event(s). To be able to make that decision, it must be possible to consistently read/write events to materialize your model before applying your business logic on it when a command is processed.
You need to store the events consistently to be able to make decisions further on. If you only publish your events to other parts of the system your model cannot use them in a consistent way.
The publishing of events to other systems is something that potentially can happen as a side-effect to use these events to also create read-models/projections or to react to them in other ways.
It does not have to be a push/publish though. It is perfectly valid to have a pull-based solution where downstream systems poll for events.
For example, in Serialized we store events in Aggregates. Feeds are used to provide a poll-based (eventually-consistent) downstream view of these events, but there is no publishing at all.
Having just read Vaughn Vernon's effective aggregate design, I'm wondering about failures related to event publishing.
In the given example at page 9 (page 3 of the PDF), we call DomainEventPublisher.publish(). The event being published allows other aggregates to execute their behaviours.
What I'm wondering is: What happens if DomainEventPublisher.publish() fails ? What happens if DomainEventPublisher.publish() succeeds, but the transaction fails ?
How implementations handle these two cases ?
DomainEventPublisher.publish() is synchronous. You'd setup a generic handler (handles all events) which stores the events in the same database transaction as the business process, which means your event storage must have the ability to be transactionnal with whatever other storage mechanism you rely on to store the state of your aggregates.
Once events have been written on disk transactionnaly, you can then put them on a message queue for asynchronous delivery.
Are there other known ways to do it?
Well, rather than using a static DomainEventPublisher you could record events in a collection on the AR, just like in event sourcing and then implement a centralised mechanism to store them (e.g. transaction hooks, using aspects, etc.).
What happens if DomainEventPublisher.publish() succeeds, but the
transaction fails?
In this case I am against Vernon approach. I prefer to return the events to the application service. This way I can persist the changes performed by the aggregate using a transaction (if needed) and, if everything is Ok, I will publish the event. This also helps to keep the business layer entirely clean and pure.
In a few words; if the transaction fails then no event is raised.
What happens if DomainEventPublisher.publish() fails?
A domain event never fails, by business rules, because it's a notification of things that happened. If an aggregate said Yes to the operation and return a event expressing the business changes; then nothing in the world should say that this operation can not be done or has to be undone.
If the event fails by infrastructure then you need to have the tools to re-raise it (automatically or manually) when the outage is fixed and eventually archive the consistency in your system. Take a look at NServiceBus. It provides retries, error queues, logs and so on to never loose the events.
If the message system is down you have at least event logs that you can use to re-rise them into the message system.
I've have a couple of questions to which I am not finding any exact answer. I've used CQRS before, but probably I was not using it properly.
Say that there are 5 services in the domain: Gateway, Sales, Payments, Credit and Warehouse, and that during the process of a user registering with the application, the front-end submits a few commands, the same front-end will then, once the user is registered, send a few other commands to create an order and apply for a credit.
Now, what I usually do is create a gateway, which receives all pubic commands, which are then validated, and if valid, are transformed into domain commands. I only use events to store data and if one service needs some action to be performed in other service, a domain command is sent directly from one service to the other. But I've seen in other systems that event handlers are used for more than store data. So my question is, what are the limits to what event handlers can do? And is it correct to send commands between services when a specific service requires that some other service performs an action or is it more correct to have the initial event raise and event and let the handler in the other service perform that action in the event handler. I am asking this because I've seen events like: INeedCreditAproved, when I was hoping to see a domain command like: ApprovedCredit.
Any input is welcome.
You're missing an important concept here - Sagas (Process Managers). You have a long-running workflow and it's better expressed centrally.
Sagas listen to events and emit commands. So OrderAccepted event will start a Saga, which then emit ApproveCredit and ReserveStock commands, to be sent to Credit and Warehouse services respectively. Saga can then listen to command success/failure events and compensate approprietely, like say emiting SendEmail command or whatever else.
One year ago I was sending commands like "send commands between services by event handlers when a specific service requires that some other service performs an action" but a stupid decision made by me switched to using events like you said "to have the initial event raise and event and let the handler in the other service perform that action in the event handler" and it worked at first. The most stupid decision I could make. Now I am switching back to sending commands from event handlers.
You can see that other people like Rinat do similar things with event ports/receptors and it is working for them, I think:
http://abdullin.com/journal/2012/7/22/bounded-context-is-a-team-working-together.html
http://abdullin.com/journal/2012/3/31/anatomy-of-distributed-system-a-la-lokad.html
Good luck
We recently started developing apps using concepts from both DDD and CQRS (no Event Sourcing). I am still somewhat confused as where exactly to call the repository to persist my Aggregate Roots.
Do I do it inside Command Handlers or do I do it in the Event Handlers?
You do this inside your command handler. You save your domain objects as normal. Even if you are not using event sourcing as a means of persisting your domain entities, you will still need to fire events that your query service will subscribe to. The event handlers on the read side will then update de-normalised tables tailor made for the UI screens. So basically you have two sets of data access code: one for the domain, one for the query service (read side). Its less work if you make use of event sourcing to persist your domain entities...
I'm new to DDD and I'm reading articles now to get more information. One of the articles focuses on domain events (DE). For example sending email is a domain event raised after some criteria is met while executing piece of code.
Code example shows one way of handling domain events and is followed by this paragraph
Please be aware that the above code will be run on the same thread within the same transaction as the regular domain work so you should avoid performing any blocking activities, like using SMTP or web services. Instead, prefer using one-way messaging to communicate to something else which does those blocking activities.
My questions are
Is this a general problem in handling DE? Or it is just concern of the solution in mentioned article?
If domain events are raised in transaction and the system will not handle them synchronously, how should they be handled?
When I decide to serialize these events and let scheduler (or any other mechanism) execute them, what happens when transaction is rolled back? (in the article event is raised in code executed in transaction) who will cancel them (when they are not persisted to database)?
Thanks
It's a general problem period never mind DDD
In general, in any system which is required to respond in a performant manner (e.g. a Web Server, any long running activities should be handled asynchronously to the triggering process.
This means queue.
Rolling back your transaction should remove item from the queue.
Of course, you now need additional mechanisms to handle the situation where the item on the queue fails to process - i.e the email isn't sent - you also need to allow for this in your triggering code - having a subsequent process RELY on the earlier process having already occurred is going to cause issues at some point.
In short, your queueing mechanism should itself be transactional and allow for retries and you need to think about the whole chain of events as a workflow.