Should every single object have an interface and all objects loosely coupled?

Question

From what I have read best practice is to have classes based on an interface and loosely couple the objects, in order to help code re-use and unit test.

Is this correct and is it a rule that should always be followed?

The reason I ask is I have recently worked on a system with 100’s of very different objects. A few shared common interfaces but most do not and wonder if it should have had an interface mirroring every property and function in those classes?

I am using C# and dot net 2.0 however I believe this question would fit many languages.

Answer 1

It's useful for objects which really provide a service - authentication, storage etc. For simple types which don't have any further dependencies, and where there are never going to be any alternative implementations, I think it's okay to use the concrete types.

If you go overboard with this kind of thing, you end up spending a lot of time mocking/stubbing everything in the world - which can often end up creating brittle tests.

Answer 2

Not really. Service components (class that do things for your application) are a good fit for interfaces, but as a rule I wouldn't bother having interfaces for, say, basic entity classes.

For example: If you're working on a domain model, then that model shouldn't be interfaces. However if that domain model wants to call service classes (like data access, operating system functions etc) then you should be looking at interfaces for those components. This reduces coupling between the classes and means it's the interface, or "contract" that is coupled.

In this situation you then start to find it much easier to write unit tests (because you can have stubs/mocks/fakes for database access etc) and can use IoC to swap components without recompiling your applications.

Answer 3

I'd only use interfaces where that level of abstraction was required - i.e. you need to use polymorphic behaviour. Common examples would be dependency injection or where you have a factory-type scenario going on somewhere, or you need to establish a "multiple inheritance" type behaviour.

In my case, with my development style, this is quite often (I favour aggregation over deep inheritance hierarchies for most things other than UI controls), but I have seen perfectly fine apps that use very little. It all depends...

Oh yes, and if you do go heavily into interfaces - beware web services. If you need to expose your object methods via a web service they can't really return or take interface types, only concrete types (unless you are going to hand-write all your own serialization/deserialization). Yes, that has bitten me big time...

Answer 4

Interfaces should be used when you want to clearly define the interaction between two different sections of your software. Especially when it is possible that you want to rip out either end of the connection and replace it with something else.

For example in my CAM application I have a CuttingPath connected to a Collection of Points. It makes no sense to have a IPointList interface as CuttingPaths are always going to be comprised of Points in my application.

However I uses the interface IMotionController to communicate with the machine because we support many different types of cutting machine each with their own commend set and method of communications. So in that case it makes sense to put it behind a interface as one installation may be using a different machine than another.

Our applications has been maintain since the mid 80s and went to a object oriented design in late 90s. I have found that what could change greatly exceeded what I originally thought and the use of interfaces has grown. For example it used to be that our DrawingPath was comprised of points. But now it is comprised of entities (splines, arcs, ec) So it is pointed to a EntityList that is a collection of Object implementing IEntity interface.

But that change was propelled by the realization that a DrawingPath could be drawn using many different methods. Once that it was realized that a variety of drawing methods was needed then the need for a interface as opposed to a fixed relationship to a Entity Object was indicated.

Note that in our system DrawingPaths are rendered down to a low level cutting path which are always series of point segments.

Answer 5

I agree with kpollock. Interfaces are used to get a common ground for objects. The fact that they can be used in IOC containers and other purposes is an added feature.

Let's say you have several types of customer classes that vary slightly but have common properties. In this case it is great to have a ICustomer interface to bound them together, logicaly. By doing that you could create a CustomerHander class/method that handels ICustomer objects the same way instead of creating a handerl method for each variation of customers.

This is the strength of interfaces. If you only have a single class that implements an interface, then the interface isn't to much help, it just sits there and does nothing.

Answer 6

A downside to interface is that they can't be versioned. Once you shipped the interface you won't be making changes to it. If you use abstract classes then you can easily extend the contract over time by adding new methods and flagging them as virtual.

As an example, all stream objects in .NET derive from System.IO.Stream which is an abstract class. This makes it easy for Microsoft to add new features. In version 2 of the frameworkj they added the ReadTimeout and WriteTimeout properties without breaking any code. If they used an interface(say IStream) then they wouldn't have been able to do this. Instead they'd have had to create a new interface to define the timeout methods and we'd have to write code to conditionally cast to this interface if we wanted to use the functionality.