DDD with web application - How to avoid rule duplication?

Question

Imagine we have a simple rule:

A member must be at least 18 years old to join.

Imagine we have a C# class for Member and it is our domain model. The rule is enforced in this class.

Now we create a web app with a view to create a new member. This view has a datepicker for entering a date for date of birth. It makes no sense to allow the user to select a date which is not valid i.e. last year. To enforce this, we need to write JavaScript. However, now the business rule has been duplicated.

This is a simple example to illustrate the question but in a real application, there will be many such duplications.

Is there any way to avoid this?

• Robert Harvey: Is there any way to avoid this? -- No. Validation is performed on the client for convenience reasons. Validation is performed on the server for data integrity reasons.
• Robert Harvey: If there is no way to avoid this, then is DDD even useful for an application which only has a web interface? -- That seems like a non-sequitur. Uselessness of DDD doesn't follow from code duplication.
• CodingYoshi: @robertharvey Thought more about the 2nd question and I agree with your comment. I am going to remove that part.
• CodingYoshi: @robertharvey Are there any best practices to minimize the duplication? Any examples?
• Robert Harvey: No. I already stated that such duplication is unavoidable.

Answer 1

No, duplication of input validation is unavoidable in an application that is split into a front-end and a back-end and where the front- and back-end communicate over an untrusted communication channel like a network.

Not doing the validation twice means that either you give the user a very bad UX by giving very late feedback on validation errors, or you open up the back-end to receive invalid data from actors that don't use the official front-end (and those actors will exist).

The only mitigation against having to write the validation logic multiple times is to write it in a language that is used by both the front- and back-end. For web-applications you are then effectively restricted to using JavaScript or languages that can be compiled into JavaScript for both ends.

• Andy: Multiplatform Kotlin also gives you the possibility to write the validations only once.
• cwap: Depending on the scale of your application, you could also build tooling to translate your validation logic from your server language to your client language - for simple rules at least. IIRC ASP.Net webforms included simple validation rules for both back- and frontend (C#/CIL and Javascript respectively)