SRP: Responsibilities

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We've just been informed that - gasp - from time to time, our confirmation email doesn't reach our user's inbox! Ah! And so: we need to implement a resend feature.

SRP: You Shouldn't Need to Change Unrelated Code

This should be easy, right? After all, we've encapsulated all of our logic for sending a confirmation email into one method. But... hmm. To get this to work, we're probably going to need to extract part of the register() method into a separate public function so that we can just resend the email... without also creating a new token and re-hashing the password.

            
            61 lines
            
            src/Manager/UserManager.php
        
                                                    ... lines 1 - 12
                            
            class UserManager
        
            {
        
                                                    ... lines 15 - 27
                            
                public function register(User $user, string $plainPassword): void
        
                {
        
                    $token = $this->createToken();
        
                    $user->setConfirmationToken($token);
        
                    $confirmationLink = $this->router->generate('check_confirmation_link', [
        
                        'token' => $user->getConfirmationToken()
        
                    ], UrlGeneratorInterface::ABSOLUTE_URL);
        
                    $confirmationEmail = (new TemplatedEmail())
        
                        ->from('staff@example.com')
        
                        ->to($user->getEmail())
        
                        ->subject('Confirm your account')
        
                        ->htmlTemplate('emails/registration_confirmation.html.twig')
        
                        ->context([
        
                            'confirmationLink' => $confirmationLink
        
                        ]);
        
                    $user->setPassword(
        
                        $this->passwordEncoder->encodePassword($user, $plainPassword)
        
                    );
        
                    $this->entityManager->persist($user);
        
                    $this->entityManager->flush();
        
                    $this->mailer->send($confirmationEmail);
        
                }
        
                                                    ... lines 55 - 59
                            
            }

Isn't it kind of weird... or at least "not ideal"... that in order to add this "email resend" feature, we're going to be messing with and rearranging code that deals with hashing passwords and persisting user data? In a perfect world, shouldn't I be able to create this "email resend" feature without going anywhere near code that's unrelated to this functionality?

This is what SRP is trying to help us with. In that "perfect" SRP world, each time a change is requested in our project, we would only need to touch code that directly relates to that change: we wouldn't need to change - or even work near - unrelated code. The fact that we're going to need to modify a method that also deals with saving users and hashing passwords... in order to add a feature that has nothing to do with that stuff... is a sign that UserManager violates SRP. Our UserManager class has too many responsibilities.

What is a "Responsibility"?

But what are the responsibilities of this class? I can think of 5 at least: generate a confirmation link... which also includes creating the confirmation token, create an email, hash a password, save the user and send an email.

But... hold on a second. And this is a very, very important - and confusing - point about SRP. Defining responsibilities is not meant to mean:

Think of all the different, tiny things that your class does.

Nope! A better way to say this might be:

Think of all the different reasons that this class might change.

That's much harder... and it completely depends on your application and business. To help with this, it's sometimes useful to think of what our class does on a higher level. In my eyes, our register method does two basic things: (1) it prepares & persists the user and (2) it sends an email.

Now let's see if we can think of a person in our "totally-not-fake" business that might ask for a change to one of these two things.

For example, for the "high level job" of "preparing and persisting the user", our database administrator might, in the future, want to change how users are stored... or our CTO might want to start using a third party authentication provider instead of storing users in a local database and managing their passwords. This type of change would affect how we hash passwords and how we save users. In other words, two of our original, so-called "responsibilities" - hashing the password and persisting the user - will likely change for the same reason. And so, they are really part of the same, one responsibility: "preparing and persisting the user".

The other "high level" thing the method does it send the confirmation email. That will most likely need to change if a marketing person wants to tweak the subject of an email to be more fun... or pass in some "featured product" variables to the template to try to sell stuff. This means that 3 of the other original so-called "responsibilities" - generating the confirmation URL, creating the email and sending the email - will all most likely change for the same reason. And so, for our project, they would all be considered one responsibility: "sending the confirmation email".

Organizing Responsibilities is an Art... at Best

Is this perfect? Definitely not! You could easily argue that sending the email would change for another reason. If someone decides we're going to start sending emails using a different email provider service... we're already protected from that change: that would just require some configuration tweaks in a different file. But what if we think that it's likely that we might change how our email verification system works in the future? In that case, we would have a legitimate reason to think that the generation of the confirmation token and link would change for a different reason than our user persistence or email creation.

Identifying the most likely reasons that a function might need to change and then grouping the functionality into those responsibilities is the hardest part of SRP. Even our grouping looks imperfect. But honestly, it's good enough! My advice is to do your best and don't over think it. We're also going to talk about over optimization of SRP later... which can lead to a different problem.

It's also helpful to keep our original "human" definition for SRP in mind:

Gather together the things that change for the same reason and separate those things that change for different reasons.

Next: now that we've identified the two responsibilities that UserManager currently has, let's refactor our code to make it more SRP compliant.

What PHP libraries does this tutorial use?

// composer.json
{
    "require": {
        "php": ">=8.1",
        "ext-ctype": "*",
        "ext-iconv": "*",
        "composer/package-versions-deprecated": "^1.11", // 1.11.99.1
        "doctrine/annotations": "^1.0", // 1.12.1
        "doctrine/doctrine-bundle": "^2", // 2.3.1
        "doctrine/doctrine-migrations-bundle": "^3", // 3.1.1
        "doctrine/orm": "^2", // 2.8.4
        "knplabs/knp-time-bundle": "^1.15", // v1.16.0
        "phpdocumentor/reflection-docblock": "^5.2", // 5.2.2
        "sensio/framework-extra-bundle": "^6.0", // v6.1.2
        "symfony/console": "5.2.*", // v5.2.6
        "symfony/dotenv": "5.2.*", // v5.2.4
        "symfony/flex": "^1.9", // v1.18.7
        "symfony/form": "5.2.*", // v5.2.6
        "symfony/framework-bundle": "5.2.*", // v5.2.6
        "symfony/http-client": "5.2.*", // v5.2.6
        "symfony/mailer": "5.2.*", // v5.2.6
        "symfony/property-access": "5.2.*", // v5.2.4
        "symfony/property-info": "5.2.*", // v5.2.4
        "symfony/security-bundle": "5.2.*", // v5.2.6
        "symfony/serializer": "5.2.*", // v5.2.4
        "symfony/twig-bundle": "5.2.*", // v5.2.4
        "symfony/validator": "5.2.*", // v5.2.6
        "symfony/webpack-encore-bundle": "^1.6", // v1.11.1
        "symfony/yaml": "5.2.*", // v5.2.5
        "twig/cssinliner-extra": "^3.3", // v3.3.0
        "twig/extra-bundle": "^2.12|^3.0", // v3.3.0
        "twig/twig": "^2.12|^3.0" // v3.3.0
    },
    "require-dev": {
        "doctrine/doctrine-fixtures-bundle": "^3.2", // 3.4.0
        "fakerphp/faker": "^1.13", // v1.14.1
        "symfony/debug-bundle": "^5.2", // v5.2.4
        "symfony/maker-bundle": "^1.13", // v1.30.2
        "symfony/monolog-bundle": "^3.0", // v3.7.0
        "symfony/stopwatch": "^5.2", // v5.2.4
        "symfony/var-dumper": "^5.2", // v5.2.6
        "symfony/web-profiler-bundle": "^5.2" // v5.2.6
    }
}

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SRP: Responsibilities

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SRP: You Shouldn't Need to Change Unrelated Code

What is a "Responsibility"?

Organizing Responsibilities is an Art... at Best

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What PHP libraries does this tutorial use?

	... lines 1 - 12
	class UserManager
	{
	... lines 15 - 27
	public function register(User $user, string $plainPassword): void
	{
	$token = $this->createToken();
	$user->setConfirmationToken($token);

	$confirmationLink = $this->router->generate('check_confirmation_link', [
	'token' => $user->getConfirmationToken()
	], UrlGeneratorInterface::ABSOLUTE_URL);

	$confirmationEmail = (new TemplatedEmail())
	->from('staff@example.com')
	->to($user->getEmail())
	->subject('Confirm your account')
	->htmlTemplate('emails/registration_confirmation.html.twig')
	->context([
	'confirmationLink' => $confirmationLink
	]);

	$user->setPassword(
	$this->passwordEncoder->encodePassword($user, $plainPassword)
	);

	$this->entityManager->persist($user);
	$this->entityManager->flush();

	$this->mailer->send($confirmationEmail);
	}
	... lines 55 - 59
	}