Design Smell: Temporal Coupling by Mark Seemann

This post is the first in a series about Poka-yoke Design - also known as encapsulation.

A common problem in API design is temporal coupling, which occurs when there's an implicit relationship between two, or more, members of a class requiring clients to invoke one member before the other. This tightly couples the members in the temporal dimension.

The archetypical example is the use of an Initialize method, although copious other examples can be found - even in the BCL. As an example, this usage of EndpointAddressBuilder compiles, but fails at run-time:

var b = new EndpointAddressBuilder();
var e = b.ToEndpointAddress();

It turns out that at least an URI is required before an EndpointAddress can be created. The following code compiles and succeeds at run-time:

var b = new EndpointAddressBuilder();
b.Uri = new UriBuilder().Uri;
var e = b.ToEndpointAddress();

The API provides no hint that this is necessary, but there's a temporal coupling between the Uri property and the ToEndpointAddress method.

In the rest of the post I will provide a more complete example, as well as a guideline to improve the API towards Poka-yoke Design.

Smell Example #

This example describes a more abstract code smell, exhibited by the Smell class. The public API looks like this:

public class Smell
{
    public void Initialize(string name)
 
    public string Spread()
}

Semantically the name of the Initialize method is obviously a clue, but on a structural level this API gives us no indication of temporal coupling. Thus, code like this compiles, but throws an exception at run-time:

var s = new Smell();
var n = s.Spread();

It turns out that the Spread method throws an InvalidOperationException because the Smell has not been initialized with a name. The problem with the Smell class is that it doesn't properly protect its invariants. In other words, encapsulation is broken.

To fix the issue the Initialize method must be invoked before the Spread method:

var sut = new Smell();
sut.Initialize("Sulphur");
var n = sut.Spread();

While it's possible to write unit tests that explore the behavior of the Smell class, it would be better if the design was improved to enable the compiler to provide feedback.

Improvement: Constructor Injection #

Encapsulation (Poka-yoke style) requires that the class can never be in an inconsistent state. Since the name of the smell is required, a guarantee that it is always available must be built into the class. If no good default value is available, the name must be requested via the constructor:

public class Fragrance : IFragrance
{
    private readonly string name;
 
    public Fragrance(string name)
    {
        if (name == null)
        {
            throw new ArgumentNullException("name");
        }
 
        this.name = name;
    }
 
    public string Spread()
    {
        return this.name;
    }
}

This effectively guarantees that the name is always available in all instances of the class. There  are also positive side effects:

• The cyclomatic complexity of the class has been reduced
• The class is now immutable, and thereby thread-safe

However, there are times when the original version of the class implements an interface that causes the temporal coupling. It might have looked like this:

public interface ISmell
{
    void Initialize(string name);
 
    string Spread();
}

In many cases the injected value (name) is unknown until run-time, in which case straight use of the constructor seems prohibitive - after all, the constructor is an implementation detail and not part of the loosely coupled API. When programming against an interface it's not possible to invoke the constructor.

There's a solution for that as well.

Improvement: Abstract Factory #

To decouple the methods in the ISmell (ha ha) interface the Initialize method can be moved to a new interface. Instead of mutating the (inconsistent) state of a class, the Create method (formerly known as Initialize) returns a new instance of the IFragrance interface:

public interface IFragranceFactory
{
    IFragrance Create(string name);
}

The implementation is straightforward:

public class FragranceFactory : IFragranceFactory
{
    public IFragrance Create(string name)
    {
        if (name == null)
        {
            throw new ArgumentNullException("name");
        }
        return new Fragrance(name);
    }
}

This enables encapsulation because both the FragranceFactory and Fragrance classes protect their invariants. They can never be in an inconsistent state. A client previously interacting with the ISmell interface can use the IFragranceFactory/IFragrance combination to achieve the same funcionality:

var f = factory.Create(name);
var n = f.Spread();

This is better because improper use of the API can now be detected by the compiler instead of at run-time. An interesting side-effect by moving towards a more statically declared interaction structure is that classes tend towards immutability. Immutable classes are automatically thread-safe, which is an increasingly important trait in the (relatively) new multi-core era.

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