What is Data Transfer Object?

Question

What is a Data Transfer Object?

In MVC are the model classes DTO, and if not what are the differences and do we need both?

Answer 1

In general Value Objects should be Immutable. Like Integer or String objects in Java. We can use them for transferring data between software layers. If the software layers or services running in different remote nodes like in a microservices environment or in a legacy Java Enterprise App. We must make almost exact copies of two classes. This is the where we met DTOs.

|-----------|                                                   |--------------|
| SERVICE 1 |--> Credentials DTO >--------> Credentials DTO >-- | AUTH SERVICE |
|-----------|                                                   |--------------|

In legacy Java Enterprise Systems DTOs can have various EJB stuff in it.

I do not know this is a best practice or not but I personally use Value Objects in my Spring MVC/Boot Projects like this:

        |------------|         |------------------|                             |------------|
-> Form |            | -> Form |                  | -> Entity                   |            |
        | Controller |         | Service / Facade |                             | Repository |
<- View |            | <- View |                  | <- Entity / Projection View |            |
        |------------|         |------------------|                             |------------|

Controller layer doesn't know what are the entities are. It communicates with Form and View Value Objects. Form Objects has JSR 303 Validation annotations (for instance @NotNull) and View Value Objects have Jackson Annotations for custom serialization. (for instance @JsonIgnore)

Service layer communicates with repository layer via using Entity Objects. Entity objects have JPA/Hibernate/Spring Data annotations on it. Every layer communicates with only the lower layer. The inter-layer communication is prohibited because of circular/cyclic dependency.

User Service ----> XX CANNOT CALL XX ----> Order Service

Some ORM Frameworks have the ability of projection via using additional interfaces or classes. So repositories can return View objects directly. There for you do not need an additional transformation.

For instance this is our User entity:

@Entity
public final class User {
    private String id;
    private String firstname;
    private String lastname;
    private String phone;
    private String fax;
    private String address;
    // Accessors ...
}

But you should return a Paginated list of users that just include id, firstname, lastname. Then you can create a View Value Object for ORM projection.

public final class UserListItemView {
    private String id;
    private String firstname;
    private String lastname;
    // Accessors ...
}

You can easily get the paginated result from repository layer. Thanks to spring you can also use just interfaces for projections.

List find(Pageable pageable);

Don't worry for other conversion operations BeanUtils.copy method works just fine.