Minimal public interface

Implement a minimal public interface which all classes understand (e.g. operations such as copy (deep versus shallow), equality testing, pretty printing, parsing from a ASCII description, etc.). --Riel's Heuristic 2.4, Arthur Riel 1996

Description

Chapter 2.4 in Arthur Riel 1996 states that:

If the classes that a developer designs and implements are to be reused by other developers in other applications, it is often useful to provide a common minimal public interface. This minimal public interface consists of functionality that can be reasonably expected from each and every class. The interface serves as a foundation for learning about the behaviors of classes in a reusable software base.

Chapter 9.5 continues with:

The minimal public interface gives users of a collection of reusable classes a basis for understanding the collection's architecture. Users come to expect a minimal functionality from anything they use in the collection.

Riel then goes on to describe a public interface that implements the following:

• Constructor
• Destructor
• Copying objects
  • Deep
  • Shallow
• Assigning objects
• Equality testing
• Print
• Parse
• Self-test

See Also

• Design by contract
• Minimize number of methods
• Riel's heuristics
• Design maxims
• Avoid interface bloat
• Avoid interface pollution