First of all I need to emphasis that any pattern does not depend on a language and actually it is a powerful concept. Programmer should have the ability to format it according to the language going to use. My first explanation is based on Observer Pattern. This pattern use to implement to one-to-many relationship. Here we have a subject object and if its state is changed it inform to all the observer objects. Let me explain it first using Java.
In Java we have pre implemented way of this pattern but I think its better to explain how we implement this pattern on our hand with better suiting to our interest and after that I explain how to use the lava pre-implemented pattern implementation.
First we define an interface for create concrete subject class. Here I need to note that we always try to code for an interface and not use concrete classes. This is good programming practice and it helps to manage code very much and dynamic object creation. Basically this interface and concrete class is for doing the a server kind of a job by managing the observers and they are some sort of clients.
public interface Subject {
public void registerObserver(Observer o);
/* observers are the clients who were been updating when subject status were changed*/
public void removeObserver(Observer o);
public void notifyObservers();
}
Now we are defining the ConcreteSubject class.
import java.util.*;
public class ConcreateSubject implements Subject {
private ArrayList observers;
public ConcreateSubject() {
observers = new ArrayList();
}
public void registerObserver(Observer o) {
observers.add(o);
}
public void removeObserver(Observer o) {
int i = observers.indexOf(o);
if (i >= 0) {
observers.remove(i);
}
}
public void notifyObservers() {
for (int i = 0; i < observers.size(); i++) {
Observer observer = (Observer)observers.get(i);
observer.update();
}
}
}
Now we need to inform the updates to the observers. To implement that I used an interface named it as Observer. Here one to many relationship perform as one subject relate to many observers.
public interface Observer {
public void update();
}
Now we are implement it using concrete observer class.
public ConcreteObserver implements Observer {
public void update(){
System.out.println(“updated”);
}
}
So that’s it. Now we are considering the Java inbuilt observer pattern support. Resource classes are available in the java.util package. Here we have Observable interface works as the Subject interface in our previous example and Observer is as normal Observer as in our previous example. (source codes of below examples took from http://www.java2s.com/Code/Java/Design-Pattern/Observableandobserver.htm)
import java.util.Observable;
import java.util.Observer;
public class MessageBoard extends Observable {
private String message;
public String getMessage() {
return message;
}
public void changeMessage(String message) {
this.message = message;
setChanged();
notifyObservers(message);
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
MessageBoard board = new MessageBoard();
Student bob = new Student();
Student joe = new Student();
board.addObserver(bob);
board.addObserver(joe);
board.changeMessage(“More Homework!”);
}
}
class Student implements Observer {
public void update(Observable o, Object arg) {
System.out.println(“Message board changed: ” + arg);
}
}
