Using Services and DAOs in spring mvc controller

Question

I'm building a web application that primarily constitutes of CRUD operations of data from back end/database. There are instances where in I have to write business logic(I'm sure we will have more business logic built as we go deeper in to development). Currently for each UI screen I'm creating I create a model class,Service class, DAO class, a controller(it's servlet essentially) and bunch of jsp pages. In most cases the service class just calls the methods from DAO to pass in model objects. Essentially we use model classes to map data from UI screens. Hence the controller will have the model objects populated when a form is submitted. I have started using service classes to keep a separation layer from web layer to DAO layer. But at times I feel that the service class is just adding unnecessary level of API calls, I would think that I could just inject the DAO in to Controller and complete the task faster. I want to use the service class only when there is additional business logic to be performed. If you have to design an application what factors do you consider using controller->DAO vs controller->Service->DAO control flow?

Answer 1

DAOs are more granular and deal with one specific entity. Services provide macro level functionalities and can end up using more than one DAO. Typically, Services are used for defining transaction boundaries to gain atomicity. In other words, if you end up updating multiple tables using multiple DAOs, defining transaction boundary at service will help in either committing or rollbacking all the changes done to DB.

In your design, since you are primarily doing CRUD for various entities, it may seem that services are not adding much value. However, think of web-based front end as one way of updating data. Usage of services will allow you to expose same capabilities as a web-service later to other forms of client like third party integrators, etc.

So, in summary, your design seems to be in line with conventional practices. If you feel that you can combine multiple services into one based on some common theme such that it can reduce the overhead of code, then, you should go ahead and do it. At the end of day, ultimate goal is to create maintainable code which no one is afraid to change when need arises.

Answer 2

In Pro-Spring-3 book they mentioned below line, for controller with JPA2

Once the EntityManagerFactory had been properly configured, injecting it into your service layer
classes is very simple.

and they are using the same class as service and repository as in below:

package com.apress.prospring3.ch10.service.jpa;
// Import statements omitted
@Service("jpaContactService")
@Repository
@Transactional
public class ContactServiceImpl implements ContactService {
private Log log = LogFactory.getLog(ContactServiceImpl.class);
@PersistenceContext
private EntityManager em;
// Other code omitted
}

but in case you are going to use spring-data CRUDRepository or JPARepository then your DAO will be Interface and you have to make service layer to handle your code

Answer 3

I'd reference my answer here

The long and short of it is the advantage of using a Service layer is it gives you room to move in the future if you want to do anything with Spring Security and roles etc. It allows you to handle transactions more atomically and Spring itself has really nice annotations for this.

Answer 4

Use a service class when dealing with more than one aggregate root.

Inject repositories (aka a dao that returns a collection) or dao's directly into controller, no need for an extra layer/class to do a basic get.

Only use service classes where necessary, otherwise you have twice as much code as required.

You can make repository generic, and annoatoate with @Transactional(propagation = Propagation.REQUIRED) which enforces a transaction is present, but won't create a new one if already present. So if you later use multple repositoes in one service class method, you will only have the one transaction.