Decoupling Business Logic from UI: Why Sharing Essential Use Cases Matters

Why Share Essential Business Logic?

In modern app development, keeping business logic separate from UI logic is not just a best practice—it’s a necessity. However, too often, crucial business logic remains deeply intertwined with UI components, making it harder to test, reuse, and scale. This post advocates for sharing essential use cases of business logic and demonstrates how Riverpod can help achieve cleaner architecture.

Problems with UI-Coupled Business Logic

1. Lack of Reusability – Business logic gets tightly coupled with widgets, making it hard to reuse in different parts of the app.
2. Poor Testability – Testing UI-bound logic requires unnecessary widget testing instead of straightforward unit tests.
3. Harder Maintenance – When logic is mixed with UI, any change in the UI might unintentionally affect the core behavior.

By sharing minimal, essential use cases of business logic, we can:

• Help others understand the core functionality without UI distractions.
• Improve modularity and scalability.
• Make contributions easier by exposing clear logic units.

Keeping Business Logic Separate with Riverpod

Riverpod is an excellent state management solution that naturally enforces separation between UI and business logic. A good example is managing a ScaffoldMessengerState as a global repository, independent of UI concerns.

Example:

@Riverpod(keepAlive: true)
GlobalKey<ScaffoldMessengerState> messenger(Ref ref) =>
    GlobalKey<ScaffoldMessengerState>();

How to Plug in messenger

To integrate this provider into your app, use:

final scaffoldMessengerKey = ref.watch(messengerProvider);
return MaterialApp(
  scaffoldMessengerKey: scaffoldMessengerKey,
  // ...

This ensures that the global ScaffoldMessengerState is accessible throughout the app, avoiding unnecessary UI-bound logic.

How to Show SnackBars from Business Logic Providers

The showSnackBar function should be called from other providers that contain business logic, ensuring a clean separation between logic and UI.

final messenger = ref.read(messengerProvider);
if (messenger.currentContext?.mounted == true) {
  messenger.currentState!
    .showSnackBar(messenger.currentContext!
      .eventSnackBar(event));
}

By checking messenger.currentContext?.mounted == true before calling showSnackBar, we ensure that the UI is still available before attempting to display a notification.

Here, eventSnackBar is an extension method of BuildContext that focuses purely on presentation logic, keeping business logic clean and UI-independent.

Benefits of Separation

• Simpler UI Components – Widgets only call logic, they don’t hold it.

• Easier Debugging & Testing – Business logic can be tested independently.

• Reusable Across the App – The logic remains consistent across different screens.

Conclusion

Business logic should always be decoupled from UI, making it easier to reuse, test, and maintain. Sharing clean, essential examples of business logic allows others to understand core concepts without UI distractions. Tools like Riverpod help achieve this separation, ensuring a scalable and modular codebase.

Let’s start sharing more essential, business-logic-focused examples in our discussions and documentation!

What are your thoughts on keeping business logic separate? Have you faced challenges in maintaining UI-free logic? Let’s discuss in the comments!