Component finder
The idea behind the C4 model is that there are a number of levels of abstraction, allowing you to zoom-in from a high-level all the way down to the code:
- Software systems
- Containers
- Components
- Code
The word “component” is a hugely overloaded term in the software development industry, but it’s a useful word to use to describe the internal structure of an application, one level up from the code. In the context of the C4 model, a component is defined as being a grouping of related functionality. With a language like Java, the simplest way to think of a component is that it’s a collection of one or more implementation classes, potentially sitting behind an interface.
The structurizr-component library includes a facility to discover components in a Java codebase, providing a way to automatically generate a component diagram from your codebase without showing all the detail associated with the code level. See C4 model - Components vs code? for more on this topic.
From an implementation perspective, Structurizr’s component finder works using a combination of Apache Commons BCEL and JavaParser, using a pluggable and customisable set of matching and filtering rules. It’s available via a Java API and the Structurizr DSL !components keyword.
See Patreon for early access to the component finder documentation.