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Components Interaction

Components in Porto like in many other architectures can interact with each other. However, we should be mindful of the dependencies across containers and especially across sections, if you intend to split into micro-services with ease.

Components Interaction Diagram​

Request Life Cycle​

The Request Life Cycle is the process through which an API call navigates through the main components of a Porto application. The following steps describe a basic API call scenario:

  1. The User calls an Endpoint in a Route file.
  2. Endpoint calls a Middleware to handle the Authentication.
  3. Endpoint calls its corresponding Controller function.
  4. The Request object, which is automatically injected in the Controller, applies the request validation and authorization rules.
  5. Controller calls an Action and passes the data from the Request object to it.
  6. Action executes the business logic, by calling multiple Tasks.
  7. Tasks execute reusable subsets of the business logic, with each Task responsible for a single portion of the main Action.
  8. Action prepares the final result to be returned to the Controller, and may collect data from the Tasks if needed.
  9. Controller builds the response using a View or Transformer, and sends it back to the User.

Views: should be used in case the App serves HTML pages.

Transformers: should be used in case the App serves JSON or XML data.

It is important to note that the Request object handles request validation (and optionally, authorization rules, unless they are handled by middlewares.), while the Action executes the business logic by calling Tasks. The Tasks are used to execute reusable subsets of the business logic, with each Task responsible for a single portion of the main Action. The View or Transformer is used to build the response that is sent back to the User.

Everything triggered before the controller pertains to the interface with the external system, such as the web or potentially blockchain in the future. Meanwhile, everything after the controller relates to your business logic, which remains reusable regardless of the external system.