Structuring Component Translators

How to structure your Component Translator projects is critical to fast, scalable development. Before taking a look at the details of Lua, it’s good to understand how to organize functions and modules in the Translator.

All you need to use are the Rules of Threes.

Hardly anything is unique. A few things are, but most are not. When you know which parts you’ve seen before, you can spend your time where it will make the most difference.

Any component can be broken down into three parts – know them and cut your workload in half:

1) Systems - the base level

Interacting with external entities - Your native API or your site-wide EMR.

The thing you always need to talk to.

2) Processes - the middle level

Functions that do things - Logic, mappings, networking, and rules used in many places. When you see yourself creating rules or logic thats used multiple times - create a library. Copying and pasting is natures way of telling you to create a library.

3) The Snowflake - the top level

These are the specific mappings and transformations - The “snowflake.” The tiny part of an interface that is like no other. Learn to spot the “snowflake”: this is the reason you’re building a new interface

Using these three levels helps you recognize patterns, recognize uniqueness, and work on what matters.

Now how do you organically write code so that it follows this three part pyramid structure? Follow our three interface development best practices.