README

bentools/specification

PHP7.1+ implementation of the Specification Pattern.

The goal

The Specification Pattern allows you to wrap some conditionnal structures into value objects. This may have no sense in your usual code, but it can be useful when the combination of your business rules reaches a high Cyclomatic Complexity.

Thus, wrapping your conditions into named objects with a specific failure handling may help you to:

• Add new business rules to existing ones
• Have a better understanding of your conditionnal structures
• Find which condition invalidates the others
• Avoid unreadable lasagna-code

The principles of the Specification Pattern are borrowed from Domain Driven Design, but can be applied anywhere.

Overview

A specification is a kind of enhanced conditionnal structure, which can be chained to other specifications.

Here's how to create a specification:

require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

use function BenTools\Specification\spec;

$color = 'green';
$spec = spec('green' === $color);
$spec->validate(); // Hurray! Our specification has been validated.

As you can see, the validate() method is used to validate a specification is met. It returns void (nothing).

When a specification is unmet, the validate() method throws an UnmetSpecificationException:

use function BenTools\Specification\spec;

$color = 'green';
$size = 'small';
$spec = spec('green' === $color)->and('big' === $size);
$spec->validate(); // Oh no! An UnmetSpecificationException has been thrown.

When handling these exceptions, you can know which specification(s) failed. To identify them, you can name each specification:

use BenTools\Specification\Exception\UnmetSpecificationException;
use function BenTools\Specification\spec;

$color = 'green';
$size = 'small';

$spec = spec('green' === $color)->withLabel('Color specification')
            ->and('big' === $size)->withLabel('Size specification');
try {
    $spec->validate();
} catch (UnmetSpecificationException $e) {
    foreach ($e->getUnmetSpecifications() as $unmetSpecification) {
        if (null !== $unmetSpecification->getLabel()) {
            printf('%s failed.' . PHP_EOL, $unmetSpecification->getLabel());
        }
    }
}

// Outputs: Size specification failed.

Specification quick check

Instead of dealing with try/catch blocks, you can check wether or not a specification is met by calling $spec->isSatisfied(), which will handle this for you and return a boolean.

use BenTools\Specification\Exception\UnmetSpecificationException;
use function BenTools\Specification\spec;

$color = 'green';
$size = 'small';

$spec = spec('green' === $color)->withLabel('Color specification')
            ->and('big' === $size)->withLabel('Size specification');
            
var_dump($spec->isSatisfied()); // (bool) false

Create specifications

The spec(), group() and not() functions, and the and() and or() methods are Specification factories, that will return a Specification object. They accept as an argument:

• A boolean
• A callable that will resolve to a boolean
• An existing Specification object

Examples:

use function BenTools\Specification\spec;
use function BenTools\Specification\group;
use function BenTools\Specification\not;

spec(true); // Specification met
not(false); // Specification met
not(spec(function () {
    return false;
})); // Specification met
group(not(spec(false))->or(true)); // Specification met

Group and Chain specifications

A Specification object contains and and or methods that can be used to create composite specifications. You can also use the group() function which will behave like parenthesis:

use function BenTools\Specification\spec;
use function BenTools\Specification\group;
use function BenTools\Specification\not;

spec(true)
    ->and(
        group(
            spec(true)->or(false)
        )
        ->or(
            not(false)
        )
    ); // Specification met

Create your own specifications

Since the Specification Pattern is intended to test your business rules, you can extend the abstract Specification class to create your own objects instead of relying on simple booleans:

use BenTools\Specification\Exception\UnmetSpecificationException;
use BenTools\Specification\Specification;

class SpecProductInStock extends Specification
{
    /**
     * @var Product
     */
    private $product;

    /**
     * SpecProductInStock constructor.
     * @param Product $product
     */
    public function __construct(Product $product)
    {
        $this->product = $product;
        $this->label = sprintf('Product %s in stock verification', $product->getName());
    }

    /**
     * Validate the specification.
     * If the specification is unmet the implementation MUST throw an UnmetSpecificationException.
     *
     * @throws UnmetSpecificationException
     */
    public function validate(): void
    {
        if (false === $this->product->isInStock()) {
            throw new UnmetSpecificationException($this);
        }
    }
}

Advanced Example

Since the Specification Pattern is intended to test your business rules, you should better implement your own Specification classes.

See our example to get started.

Installation

composer require bentools/specification ^3.0

License

MIT