It was quite a ride so far. We have seen commands, command buses, events and event buses. We distilled some more knowledge about them while formulating answers to some interesting questions from readers.

Why you should not dispatch events while handling a command

In a previous post we discussed a sample event (the UserSignedUp event):

class UserSignedUp implements Event
{
    public function name()
    {
        return 'user_signed_up';
    }

    public function __construct($userId)
    {
        $this->userId = $userId;
    }

    public function userId()
    {
        return $this->userId;
    }
}

An instance of such an event can be handed over to the event bus. It will look for any number of event handlers that wants to be notified about the event. In the case of the UserSignedUp event, one of the interested event handlers is the SendWelcomeMailWhenUserSignedUp handler:

So far we’ve had three posts in this series about commands, events and their corresponding buses and handlers:

• A wave of command buses
• Responsibilities of the command bus
• From commands to events

Now I’d like to take the time to answer some of the very interesting questions that by readers.

The difference between commands and events

Robert asked:

[…], could you possibly explain what are the main differences between a command bus and an even dispatcher?

In the previous posts we looked at commands and the command bus. Commands are simple objects which express a user’s intention to change something. Internally, the command object is handed over to the command bus, which performs the change that has been requested. While it eventually delegates this task to a dedicated command handler, it also takes care of several other things, like wrapping the command execution in a database transaction and protecting the original order of commands.