Should you wrap 3rd party libraries that you adopt into your project? [closed]

Answer 1

I would not wrap it as a one to one thing, but I would layer the app so that each part it replaceable as much as possible. The ISO OSI model works well for all types of software :-)

Answer 2

The purpose of wrapping even a well-tested and time-proven 3rd-party library is that you might decide to switch libraries at some point in the future. Wrapping it makes it easier to switch without changing any code in your core application. Only the wrapper needs to change.

If you're absolutely sure that you'll never (another absolute) use a different logging framework in your project, go ahead and skip the wrapper. Even having said that, I'd probably hold off on writing the wrapper until I knew I needed it, like the first time I need to switch.

Answer 3

It's a perfect example for YAGNI:

• it is more work
• it inflates your project
• it may complicate your design
• it has no immediate benefit
• the scenarion you write it for may never manifest
• when it does, your wrapper most likely needs to be re-written completely because it is tied too closely to the concrete library you were using and the new one's API simply doesn't match yours.

Answer 4

Wrapping a whole library is boilerplate, ineffective, and wrong in most cases. It can be done in a much clever way. I'd say that wrapping a library is appropriate mostly in case of UI component libraries, and again, you have to be adding some additional core functionality of yours to all the components for this to be needed.

• if too much modifications and additions are needed, this is most likely not the library you are looking for
• if there is a moderate amount of additions and modifications - there are always the design patterns that come handy in those cases. The Decorator pattern (allows new/additional behaviour to be added to an existing object dynamically) , for example, is rather suitable for the most cases.
• IDE search/replace and refactoring capabilities offer an easy way to change your code in all required places if some important change is needed and a wrapping object appears. (of course, unit-tests would be helpful here ;) )