Returning Domain level Models is bad. Really bad.
So bad that GPT4 says:
- Leaky Abstraction: Returning entities exposes the internal structure of the database, leading to a tightly coupled design, making it harder to change the schema without breaking the API.
- Security Risks: Entities might contain sensitive data that could accidentally be exposed, even with @JsonIgnore, increasing the risk of data leakage.
- Performance Overhead: Entities often include unnecessary fields and relationships, which may result in over-fetching data that is irrelevant for the client, leading to inefficiency.
- Serialization Issues: Entities might have complex relationships (e.g., bidirectional associations) that can lead to infinite loops during serialization, even with @JsonIgnore.
- Separation of Concerns: Using DTOs ensures that the API layer is separated from the persistence layer, promoting cleaner code and reducing unintended side effects during data transformation.
Returning Domain level Models is bad. Really bad.
So bad that GPT4 says: