Most developers make the mistake of treating third-party API responses as "truth" within their core business logic. I've seen too many codebases where a Stripe or Shopify response object is passed directly through the service layer and into the database. This is a recipe for disaster; the moment a vendor changes a field name or deprecates a version, your entire application crashes in a cascade of null pointer exceptions.
The only way to build a resilient system is to implement a strict Anti-Corruption Layer (ACL). Every single external integration should be wrapped in a mapper that converts the vendor's schema into your own internal domain model immediately upon entry. If the API changes, you only have to update one mapping function rather than hunting down every reference to a third-party object across your entire repository.
It feels like boilerplate at first, but decoupling your domain from external dependencies is the difference between a professional architecture and a fragile one. Your core logic should not know or care who provides the data; it should only care that the data conforms to the contract you defined.
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