Factoring out common MVP services into a Service Facade

Shortly after adopting the Model-View-Presenter pattern, I found myself copying the same service call into multiple presenters, as both a navigation panel and a main content area can sometimes display the same information. I decided to factor out the repeated service calls into a Service Facade (for lack of a better name) and inject the facade into each presenter that’s needed.

	@Inject
	public AddPrayerListPresenter(Display display, EventBus eventBus, PrayerListServiceFacade prayerListServiceFacade)
	{
		super(display, eventBus);
		this.prayerListServiceFacade = prayerListServiceFacade;
		bind();
	}

Inside the service facade, I use constructor injection to get the event bus and dispatcher the same as in a presenter.

	@Inject
	public PrayerListServiceFacade(final EventBus eventBus,
			final DispatchAsync dispatch, RoaModel roaModel)
	{
		this.dispatch = dispatch;
		this.eventBus = eventBus;
		this.model = roaModel;
	}

	public void refreshPrayerLists()
	{
		GWT.log("Calling actionFindLists", null);
		// Fire event that marks start of the service call so listeners
		// can show the AJAX wait thingy if desired
		eventBus.fireEvent(new RefreshingPrayerListsEvent());
		dispatch.execute(new FindPrayerListsAction(),
				new AsyncCallback<FindPrayerListsResult>()
				{
					@Override
					public void onFailure(Throwable e)
					{
						GWT.log(e.getMessage(), e);
						Window.alert(e.getLocalizedMessage());
					}

					@Override
					public void onSuccess(FindPrayerListsResult result)
					{
						eventBus.fireEvent(new PrayerListsModifiedEvent(result.getPrayerLists()));
					}
				});
	}

The refreshPrayerLists() method contains the code that had been common to multiple presenters. There is one difference, however. When a presenter calls a service, it typically passes a DisplayCallback object, which gwt-presenter uses to call the view’s startProcessing() and stopProcessing() methods so you can show an Ajax wait thingy (er, progress indicator?) I could add a Display argument to the service method and create a DisplayCallback as usual; however, in this case, I want the refresh method to be called only once in conjunction with the event that necessitates a refresh (say, a new prayer list is added). And I want multiple widgets to be notified when the service call begins, and when it finishes. To accomplish this, I pass only a regular AsyncCallback object and fire an event both before and after the service call, to which any interested widget can listen.

In summary, the service facade provides a way to group all related service calls in one place and to factor out common calls from multiple presenters. Now all I need is a better name for it, as it sounds a little scary for my taste…

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