I've been trying for a while to write clean and testable code, with the help of DI and abstractions. I found myself guilty of *service-itis*, creating 3 or 4 interfaces for something that clearly doesn't need it. So I decided to relax, and only abstract what **really** needs it. I'm faced with a problem where I'm not sure what is the best way to solve. Let me explain, the requirements are pretty straightforward. > The application must determine, when a user wants to sign up, if he's blacklisted, based on a couple of information about the user > The service providing the information about the possible blacklisting of the player is external, and not accessible from our development platforms. OK, I see here a need for an interface to abstract the blacklisting service so I can test properly the actions that rely on the fact that a user may be blacklisted, so I come up with a cery basic interface: <!-- language: c# --> public interface IUserBlacklistService { Boolean IsUserBlacklisted(IsUserBlacklistedRequest request); } public class IsUserBlacklistedRequest { public String FirstName { get; set; } public String LastName { get; set; } public DateTime BirthDate { get; set; } public String BirthCity { get; set; } public String BirthCountry { get; set; } public String BirthDepartment { get; set; } } Now, the actual service I have to deal with works this way: > The blacklist is exposed as a DNS server, meaning I have to make a DNS query, asking for *hashofsomeoftheuserinformation.somedomain.tld*, something like *firstnamelastnamebirthdate.somedomain.tld* > If the provided information matches entries in the blacklist, the DNS server replies with TXT records containing: > - A set of information for French user - Another set of information for other users > I then have to match this information with the information the user filled to know if he's blacklisted or not. At this point, I'm thinking of creating the `DnsUserBlacklistService` class implementing the `IUserBlacklistService`, but also of creating another abstraction representing **only** the DNS query, let's call it `IDnsService`, which will look like: <!-- language: c# --> public interface IDnsService { IEnumerable<String> GetRecords(String queriedDomain); } This, in my mind, will allow me to safely test: - That the queried domain is the right one, so I know I build the hash correctly from the user information - That the matching between the returned TXT records and the user information is correct So the class `DnsUserBlacklistService` would look like this: <!-- language: c# --> public class DnsUserBlacklistService: IDnsUserBlacklistService { private readonly IDnsService _dnsService; private readonly String _domain; public DnsUserBlacklistService(IDnsService dnservice, String domain) { _dnsService = dnsService; _domain = domain; } public Boolean IsUserBlacklisted(IsUserBlacklistedRequest request) { var subDomainToQuery = GetSubDomainToQuery(request); var fullDomainToQuery = String.Format("{0}.{1}", subDomainToQuery, _domain); var dnsRecords = _dnsService.GetRecords(fullDomainToQuery); if (dnsRecords != null && dnsRecords.Any()) { // Match between records and user information // Note: I know I shouldn't write pseudo-code, but this part // is really unrelevant to the question } // If no DNS records, assume the user is not blacklisted return false; } private String GetSubDomainToQuery(IsUserBlacklistedRequest request) { return String.Concat( request.FirstName, request.LastName, request.BirthDate.ToString("yyyyMMdd") ); } } It seems to me that having everything in the `DnsUserBlacklistService` class wouldn't allow me to test thoroughly the process. I could have some `internal` methods being exposed to the test project with an `[InternalsVisibleTo]` attribute, like the hash construction, but that doesn't abstract me from the actual DNS query, which is **the one** external service I don't own. In the end, my question is: **am I going too far with abstractions?** Maybe some thoughts on this particular example could help me decide in the future where to stop. [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25745941/how-far-should-i-go-with-abstraction