Microservices Patterns

Master microservices architecture patterns including service boundaries, inter-service communication, data management, and resilience patterns for building distributed systems.

When to Use This Skill

• Decomposing monoliths into microservices
• Designing service boundaries and contracts
• Implementing inter-service communication
• Managing distributed data and transactions
• Building resilient distributed systems
• Implementing service discovery and load balancing
• Designing event-driven architectures

Core Concepts

1. Service Decomposition Strategies

By Business Capability

• Organize services around business functions
• Each service owns its domain
• Example: OrderService, PaymentService, InventoryService

By Subdomain (DDD)

• Core domain, supporting subdomains
• Bounded contexts map to services
• Clear ownership and responsibility

Strangler Fig Pattern

• Gradually extract from monolith
• New functionality as microservices
• Proxy routes to old/new systems

2. Communication Patterns

Synchronous (Request/Response)

• REST APIs
• gRPC
• GraphQL

Asynchronous (Events/Messages)

• Event streaming (Kafka)
• Message queues (RabbitMQ, SQS)
• Pub/Sub patterns

3. Data Management

Database Per Service

• Each service owns its data
• No shared databases
• Loose coupling

Saga Pattern

• Distributed transactions
• Compensating actions
• Eventual consistency

4. Resilience Patterns

Circuit Breaker

• Fail fast on repeated errors
• Prevent cascade failures

Retry with Backoff

• Transient fault handling
• Exponential backoff

Bulkhead

• Isolate resources
• Limit impact of failures

Service Decomposition Patterns

Pattern 1: By Business Capability

# E-commerce example

# Order Service
class OrderService:
    """Handles order lifecycle."""

    async def create_order(self, order_data: dict) -> Order:
        order = Order.create(order_data)

        # Publish event for other services
        await self.event_bus.publish(
            OrderCreatedEvent(
                order_id=order.id,
                customer_id=order.customer_id,
                items=order.items,
                total=order.total
            )
        )

        return order

# Payment Service (separate service)
class PaymentService:
    """Handles payment processing."""

    async def process_payment(self, payment_request: PaymentRequest) -> PaymentResult:
        # Process payment
        result = await self.payment_gateway.charge(
            amount=payment_request.amount,
            customer=payment_request.customer_id
        )

        if result.success:
            await self.event_bus.publish(
                PaymentCompletedEvent(
                    order_id=payment_request.order_id,
                    transaction_id=result.transaction_id
                )
            )

        return result

# Inventory Service (separate service)
class InventoryService:
    """Handles inventory management."""

    async def reserve_items(self, order_id: str, items: List[OrderItem]) -> ReservationResult:
        # Check availability
        for item in items:
            available = await self.inventory_repo.get_available(item.product_id)
            if available < item.quantity:
                return ReservationResult(
                    success=False,
                    error=f"Insufficient inventory for {item.product_id}"
                )

        # Reserve items
        reservation = await self.create_reservation(order_id, items)

        await self.event_bus.publish(
            InventoryReservedEvent(
                order_id=order_id,
                reservation_id=reservation.id
            )
        )

        return ReservationResult(success=True, reservation=reservation)

Pattern 2: API Gateway

from fastapi import FastAPI, HTTPException, Depends
import httpx
from circuitbreaker import circuit

app = FastAPI()

class APIGateway:
    """Central entry point for all client requests."""

    def __init__(self):
        self.order_service_url = "http://order-service:8000"
        self.payment_service_url = "http://payment-service:8001"
        self.inventory_service_url = "http://inventory-service:8002"
        self.http_client = httpx.AsyncClient(timeout=5.0)

    @circuit(failure_threshold=5, recovery_timeout=30)
    async def call_order_service(self, path: str, method: str = "GET", **kwargs):
        """Call order service with circuit breaker."""
        response = await self.http_client.request(
            method,
            f"{self.order_service_url}{path}",
            **kwargs
        )
        response.raise_for_status()
        return response.json()

    async def create_order_aggregate(self, order_id: str) -> dict:
        """Aggregate data from multiple services."""
        # Parallel requests
        order, payment, inventory = await asyncio.gather(
            self.call_order_service(f"/orders/{order_id}"),
            self.call_payment_service(f"/payments/order/{order_id}"),
            self.call_inventory_service(f"/reservations/order/{order_id}"),
            return_exceptions=True
        )

        # Handle partial failures
        result = {"order": order}
        if not isinstance(payment, Exception):
            result["payment"] = payment
        if not isinstance(inventory, Exception):
            result["inventory"] = inventory

        return result

@app.post("/api/orders")
async def create_order(
    order_data: dict,
    gateway: APIGateway = Depends()
):
    """API Gateway endpoint."""
    try:
        # Route to order service
        order = await gateway.call_order_service(
            "/orders",
            method="POST",
            json