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I had a monolithic application and now, I want to separate this application into multiple services.

For example, consider the User and the Notification services that two of them will be written with PHP and Laravel framework.

Now I want the Notification service to be responsible for formatting and sending messages. In the previous version, I could handle the notification just with Model and Notifiable trait easily, but now I don't have access to the User model in the Notification service.

How can I handle the Laravel notification, should I repeat the User model in this domain?

Is there any example to be used?

Hanie Asemi
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  • If they are going to be separate code bases, then you will have to expose APIs for them to communicate, so forget about already existing traits. What you could do (but I think is going to be gross) is to expose an API where you have to share the user details, save it as a literal user 9n that system, and use the trait, then delete the user or whatever you will do with it. I do not recommend duplicating data, as then they get out of sync and is a total pain... – matiaslauriti Jun 21 '23 at 10:25

1 Answers1

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You rightly pointed out that one service (Notification) may not have access to the data it needs to operate (User data), which was previously directly accessible in a monolithic setup.

In a microservice architecture, each service should be self-contained and loosely coupled, which means that duplicating the User model in the Notification service could lead to issues down the line (like data consistency, handling updates, etc.).

Instead, consider the following approach:

  1. Event-driven communication: Whenever the User service has an event that requires a notification (like user creation, updates, etc.), it can publish an event. The Notification service can listen for these events and handle the notification. This is a common pattern in microservices architecture and it decouples the services so that they don't have to know about each other's internal structures.

  1. API calls: Another common way to handle inter-service communication in a microservices architecture is to use API calls. The Notification service can make a request to the User service's API to fetch necessary user details for a given notification.

  2. Data Transfer Objects (DTOs): Instead of directly using models across services, consider using DTOs that can be tailored to each service's needs. DTOs can be seen as a form of contract or API between services, reducing the coupling between them.

ismayil-dev
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