Hello there! I'm Shankar Kakumani, the Lead of Android & Flutter Development here at Binaryveda. We have created many successful projects using Clean Architecture since 2015. Today, I want to give you a brief introduction to what Clean Architecture is and why we adopted it at such an early stage when it was not so well-known.

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Clean Architecture, a term coined by Robert C. Martin a.k.a Uncle Bob, involves structuring the code in such a way that it becomes easy to manage, understand, and test, thereby increasing the overall productivity and efficiency of the development process.

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The Core Principles of Clean Architecture

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1. Separation of Concerns: Clean Architecture emphasises dividing the app into independent layers, each with a specific responsibility. This approach reduces coupling, improves testability, and facilitates maintenance.

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2. Independence of External Technologies: Clean Architecture aims to keep the app independent of external technologies such as libraries and frameworks. This approach makes it easier to switch to different technologies in the future without affecting the application's core functionality.

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3. Dependency Inversion: Dependency Inversion is another crucial principle of Clean Architecture. According to this principle, higher-level modules should depend on lower-level modules through abstractions rather than concrete implementations. This approach makes it easier to swap out implementations of external dependencies without affecting the rest of the app.

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4. Business Logic Focus: Clean Architecture focuses on the business rules and logic of the application, rather than the specific technologies used to implement it. By focusing on business logic, you can build apps that are easier to understand, test, maintain, and evolve.

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Under Clean Architecture, the overall system is split into different layers, each with its responsibilities. As a result, the system is more flexible, maintainable, and testable. The architecture is primarily composed of data, presentation, and domain layers:

1. Data Layer: This is also known as the Infrastructure layer in some contexts. This layer is responsible for handling all the data that the application needs. It is where the details of databases, file systems, and external services would be implemented. This includes things like implementing SQL queries, calling APIs of external services, or reading/writing files.

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2. Domain Layer: It encapsulates the business logic of the application and core business rules. This layer represents the real-world concepts and rules of the domain that the software is built for. It's independent of any specific technology or delivery mechanism. In this layer, you'll find all the business objects, known as Entities, and business logic, known as Use Cases.

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3. Presentation Layer: This layer is responsible for presenting information to the user and interpreting the user's commands. It includes things like controllers, views, presenters, and UI models. The Presentation layer doesn't contain any business logic; it just sends user commands to the appropriate Use Case in the Domain layer and then formats the response to be suitable for the user interface.

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Adopting Clean Architecture has allowed us to create robust, scalable, and efficient mobile applications that stand the test of time. It has enabled our team to easily understand and contribute to any part of the application codebase, resulting in quicker development times, better resource allocation, and ultimately, happier clients. As the journey continues, we are constantly exploring ways to refine our approach and implementation of Clean Architecture, with an unceasing aim to provide the best for our clients.

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In future posts, I'll delve deeper into our experiences with Clean Architecture, including challenges we've faced, solutions we've implemented, and successes we've celebrated.

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If you're starting on the Clean Architecture journey or considering it, stay tuned. Through this series, I aim to shed more light into its transformative potential, with a focus on its application in Flutter.

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