Slinky Framework

Introduction

The Slinky Framework is an opinionated framework that makes developing web scale applications quicker and easier.

The framework aims to provide a high level of consistency and removal of duplication across component code and build configurations.

Developers of Slinky applications should therefore not need to be cutting-and-pasting boiler plate code and configuration between components due to the use of configuration builders, aspects and Maven parent POM files.

Overview

The Slinky Framework is designed around the use of the Hexagonal Design Pattern (aka Ports & Adapters Design Pattern).

Using the Hexagonal Design Pattern an application has well defined layers. By using well defined interfaces between layers, functionality can be 'hooked' onto or introduced at each layer.

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The Slinky Framework uses AspectJ aspects and the RestController, SlinkyApplication, SlinkyClient and SlinkyRepository interfaces to introduce cross-cutting functionality such as Structured Logging.

The Slinky Framework also helps manage a component's dependencies by providing a minimal suite of pre-selected dependencies that have had all of their transitive dependencies resolved to avoid conflicts. These conflicts can sometimes be hidden and not encountered until runtime.

The packages selected for use when building a Slinky application are:

• Java 8
• Maven
• AspectJ
• Spring
• Spring Boot
• Spring Cloud
• SLF4J
• JUnit
• Hamcrest
• Mockito
• Cucumber-JVM
• WireMock

See Dependency Management for how a Slinky application simplifies this problem.

Features

The following features are provided by the Slinky Framework:

• Dependency Management
• Structured Logging

Experimental Features

The following features are in the early stages of being added to the Slinky Framework and may be subject to change:

• Performance Testing

Releases

Notes on the Slinky Framework releases can be found here.

Build Profiles

To be documented:

mvn clean verify -P coverage mvn clean compile -P checker mvn clean install -P docker mvn clean verify -P performance