Creating Adapters to Interact with the Outside World

There is a time in software development at which we need to decide which technologies will be supported by a system. We’ve discussed in previous chapters how technological choices should not be the primary driver for developing hexagonal applications. In fact, applications based on this architecture present a high degree of changeability, enabling a system to be integrated with different technologies with as little friction as possible. This is because the hexagonal architecture establishes a clear frontier between which part of the code is related to business and which is related to technology.

In this chapter, we’re going to explore the hexagonal approach to establishing this frontier. We’ll learn about the role adapters play when we need to set up technologies or protocols to enable a hexagonal application to communicate with the outside world.

We’ll learn about the following topics in this chapter...