How To Use Service Oriented Architecture In IOS Swift

It’s always interesting while talking about software and application development architecture. There are certain processes and principles which everyone need to follow for the smooth operation. Clean, reusable and bug free codes are always good for us and to implement that Service Oriented Architecture has great role.

Service-oriented architecture makes our life easier by structuring the interaction between the high-level and lower-level implementations while keeping our code reusable and structured.

So now the question arises, what exactly service oriented architecture (SOA) is?

What is Service Oriented Architecture?

Service Oriented Architecture is an architecture pattern that consolidates functionalities and business logic in such a way that services can be injected into view controllers for use. This process easily and cleanly separates the front end user interface and the back end programming and business logic.

(Source – orientsoftware.com)

Why Service Oriented Architecture

Service Oriented Architecture has several benefits. The most important part is it manages the business changes quickly and supports the newer channels of customer interaction. Let’s have a quick look some of the benefits below,

• Improvement in the flow of information.
• Flexibility in the functionalities.
• Reduced cost in the developmental cycle.
• Easy to manage.
• Improvement in data confidentiality and hence more reliability.
• Quicker system upgrades.
• Testing has improved.
• Re-usability of codes.
• A standard form of communication is established.
• Allowing scalability to meet the needs of clients.

(Source – orientsoftware.com)

There are many patterns which can be used on the iOS development like MVC, MVVM, MVP, or VIPER. These architectural patterns handle only the higher level (UI) of our application. But soon after, we also need to implement the network managers, API clients, data sources, persistence containers, and so on.

In the following folder structure and piece of code we can view, how to implement a service-oriented architecture (SOA) in our iOS app development.

Folder Structure

• Classes
  • DataAccessLayer
  • PresentationLayer
  • WebAccessLayer
  • BusinessLayer

1. The DataAccessLayer folder contains the persistence layer folders
   1. DBHelper
   2. CoreDataManager
   3. CoreDataObject
2. PresentationLayer folder contains the user interface layer folders
   1. ViewControllers
   2. CustomCells
   3. CustomViews
3. WebAccessLayer folder contains the
   1. APIManager
4. BusinessLayer folder contains the business logic
   1. BusinessLogic
   2. BusinessObj

Sample Code

1. DBHelper

func insertSportsToLocalDB(arrSports:NSMutableArray) ->Void {
 }

2. CoreDataManager

funcfetchPrivacySettingData() ->Array<Any> {
do {
# fetch result from local db
             } catchlet error asNSError {
# handle the sql exception
             }  
return results!
 }

3. CoreDataObject

extensionCourts {

    @nonobjc public class funcfetchRequest() ->NSFetchRequest<Courts> {
returnNSFetchRequest<Courts>(entityName: "Courts");
    }

    @NSManaged public varvenue_id: String?
...
...
}

4. ViewControllers

funcserviceCallToSaveGame() ->Void {
#show activity indicator
#prepare the service call request
letparams = ["user_id" : UserDefaults.standard.object(forKey: STRING_CONSTANT.KEY_USERID)]
#call the api manager web service call method 
APIManager.sharedInstance.serviceCallRelatedToVenue(url: _API_PATH.kCreatePOI
param: params)(
#hide the indicator
...
}
}

5. CustomCells

a. CustomCells contains listview of user interface

6. CustomViews

funcdesignCustomListPopUp(withDataarrLists: Array<Any>) ->Void {
...
}

7. APIManager

funcserviceCallToGetProfile(withPathpath:String, withDataparam:[String:Any], withCompletionHandler completion:@escaping (AnyObject?) ->Void){

Alamofire.request(requestURL, method: .post, parameters: param, encoding: URLEncoding.methodDependent, headers: nil).responseJSON { (responseJson) in
}

}

Advantages of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)

1. Reliability

With small and independent services in the SOA, it becomes easier to test and debug the applications instead of debugging the massive code chunks, which makes the service-oriented architecture highly reliable.

2. Location Independence

Services are located through the service registry and can be accessed through Uniform Resource Locator (URL), therefore they can change their location over time without interrupting consumer experience on the system while making SOA location independent.

3. Scalability

As SOA enables services to run across multiple platforms, programming languages and services, that is, services of the service-oriented architecture operate on different servers within an environment, which increases its scalability.

4. Platform Independence

Service-Oriented Architecture permits the development of the complex application by integrating different services opted from different sources that make it independent of the platform.

5. Loosely Coupled

The loose coupling concept in SOA is inspired by the object-oriented design paradigm that reduces coupling between classes to cherish an environment where classes can be changed without breaking the existing relationship. SOA highly encourages the development of independent services to enhance the efficiency of the software application.

6. Re-usability

An application based on SOA is developed by accumulating small, self-contained and loosely coupled functionality services. It allows the re-usability of the services in multiple applications independently without interacting with other services.

7. Agility

The capability of gathering applications from reusable components or services, instead of rewriting and reintegrating each new development project helps developers to design an application rapidly in response to the new business requirements which in return increases the agility of SOA.

8. Easy Maintenance

As the service oriented architecture is an independent unit or entity, the maintenance or updates of the application has become far easier without having to worry about other services.

Conclusion:

Service Oriented Architecture handles the business process easily and makes the software codes clean, reusable and bug free.  Service oriented architecture implementation in iOS Swift is interesting. I hope the above process must help you to get a clear picture of implementation.

At Andolasoft we have a team dedicated iOS app developer who has long expertise in implementation of SOA. Our developers can help you in all your mobile app development issues. So don’t hesitate to communicate with them. Book a free consultation to access them directly.