design patterns. patterns 1, 2, 3, … is a sequence that exhibits the pattern: the integers in...
TRANSCRIPT
Design Patterns
Patterns
• 1, 2, 3, …
is a sequence that exhibits the pattern:
The integers in their natural order
Another Sequence
• 1, 3, 5, …
– The pattern:
The odd integers, in order
What is a Pattern?
• A template or model for imitation– A dress pattern
– A cookie cutter
– As we shall see, an object-oriented design diagram
• A set of rules– For the Fibonacci sequence, the rule is:
the ith element (except for f0 and f1) is equal to the sum of the (i-1)st element and the (i-2)nd element.
Why are Patterns Useful?
• Patterns describing infinite sequences eliminate having to enumerate all values
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, …
Don’t have to list all the elements
Why are Patterns Useful?
• A pattern can be a convenient membership test for a set of elements
– Regular expressions denote patterns of strings• For example
[a-zA-Z][a-zA-z0-9]*
is a pattern representing identifiers
– Compilers use regular expressions to test for identifiers
Why are Patterns Useful?
• Knowledge of a pattern can enable one to easily produce new objects:
Why are Patterns Useful?
• In particular, patterns discerned from existing situations may be applied to new situations
a, b, c, …
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, …
But Sometimes the Similarities are not Obvious
Which Bring Us To…
• Do1, 2, 3, …
and
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, …
exhibit the same pattern?
Patterns and Abstraction
Patterns and Abstraction
1, 2, 3, …
the integers in their natural order
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, …
the days of the week in their natural order
Are these the same pattern?
Patterns and Abstraction
The pattern we really mean is
The elements of some sequence taken in their natural order
What about the fact that the integers are infinite and the days of the week are finite?
Some Patterns are Simple…ABC
Jackson 5Michael: you went to school to learn, girlThings you never, never knew before...……Jermaine: sit yourself down, take a seatAll you gotta do is repeat after me.
J5: a b cMichael: easy as...J5: 1 2 3Michael: or simple as...J5: do re miMichael: abc, 123, baby, you and me girl!
Others are Less Obvious…
• 2, 3, 5, 7, …– primes
• March, April, June, …– Months without a ‘Y’ in their names in natural order
Mensa likes to use patterns like these as part of their qualification test
Some are Quite Difficult…
• 6, 28, 496, …– perfect numbers
• e, t, a, …– most frequent letters in the English language in
descending order
… And Some are Just Downright Ornery
• 214, 232, 234, … – Classrooms on 2nd floor of New Ingersoll from east to
west
• 1110, 2210, 3110, …– For cryin’ out loud– you’re CIS majors!
Especially if they’re not mathematical and you don’t know the context
Patterns Within Patterns
A B C
And Now For Something Completely Different…
Summing Integers Read from a File
cin >> i;while (i >= 0) {total += i;cin >> i;
}
Finding the Maximum Double in a File
cin >> d;while (cin) {if (d > max) max = d;cin >> d;
}
Building a String from a Line of Characters
i = 0;c = getchar(); while (c != ‘\n’ && c != EOF)
s[i++] = c;c = getchar();
}s[i] = ‘\0’;
Three Individual Pieces of Code…
• Different datum types – int, double, char
• Different end-of-input conditions – negative datum, end-of-file, end-of-line/end-of-
file
• Different tasks:– summing, maximum, string construction
… and Yet A Pattern Emerges
• In all three cases:– Values are read from a file– A condition is used to test for end-of-input– The values are processed in some fashion– A ‘priming-the-pump’ technique is used
An Input Loop Pattern
read first itemwhile (still more items) {process itemread next item
}
Why Are Such Patterns Useful?
• Avoids ‘reinventing the wheel’
• Avoids making the same mistakes over and over again
• Speeds up the development process
• ‘Reusability’ of sorts
Design Patterns
• Pattern concept applied to software design
• Not a finished product– Reuseability of design ‘ideas’
• Many patterns crop up over and over again
A Non-Software Example- Flywheel
• A flywheel is a massive rotating disk
• The basic idea is to accelerate the flywheel to a very high speed and thus maintain the energy as rotational energy using the disk.
Flywheel - Samples
Why a Flywheel?
• In the 70’s engineers were looking for a low-emissions, non-internal-combustion vehicle.
• Wanted to be able to ‘charge’ the vehicle and have it store that charge– Charging involved bringing the flywheel up to a high
speed
• Batteries were too bulky, heavy– Would need tens of batteries for a small vehicle
Flywheel – Useful For
• Storing kinetic energy – often in a fairly small space
• Maintaining a uniform force.
• Production of high power pulses
• Can also be used to create a form of gyroscopic effect
Flywheel – Advantages
• Not affected by temperature changes
• No limit to energy stored
• Simple to measure stored force (measure rotation speed)
Flywheel – Disadvantages
• Danger of explosive shattering of wheel
Flywheel – Parts
• Massive wheel
• Axle
• Bearings
Flywheel - Applications
• Low-cost toys (the kind you wind up by running the wheels along the floor)
• Energy-efficient cars (during braking, surplus energy is used to accelerate the flywheel which can subsequently power the driveshaft)
• Used on satellites to point the instruments in correct direction
• Potters wheel
Flywheel - Summary
• Note the variety of applications
• Yet all use the same basic design pattern
Flywheel - Summary
• Notice what we did here – Provided a motivational situation (low-emission
vehicle)
– Presented the purpose of the flywheel
– Described when to use one
– Presented the parts of the flywheel
– Discussed advantages and disadvantages
– Gave known applications
– Presented some samples
A Simple Software Example
• You’ve got a program from CISC 3130 (Data Structures)
– Written in C++
– Uses a stack class template• Which you wrote (whole point of assignment)
• Massive application– Hundreds of modules
– Thousands of lines of code– Ok, Ok, two hundred lines of code in one file
– Stack usage scattered throughout system
Our Simple Software Example
• After CISC 3130, you learn about the STL (Standard Template Library)– Library of useful data structures, including those you learned in 3130
• You decide you want to play with it– Good to know for a tech interview
• So you toss out your stack and begin using the one from the STL
The Problem
• Your stack’s operations:– push – places argument on top of stack– pop – pops stack returning value– isEmpty – true if empty
• STL’s stack’s operations:– push – same– peek – returns top of stack– pop – pops stack, no value returned– empty – different name, same semantics
There’s a mismatch in the interfaces
Solution #1
• Change the application code to conform to the new operations
The Changes• Replace
s.isEmpty(); // yourswith
s.empty(); // STL’s
ands.pop(); // yours
withs.peek(); // STL’s
s.pop();
Global edit replace?
??? !!!
#^%$!!!Scratch that solution!!
void clear() {
while(!s.isEmpty())
s.pop();
}
void clear() {
while(!s.empty())
s.peek();
s.pop();
}
So??
• What’s Plan B?
Plan B• Add a new class, StackAdapter
– StackAdapter declares a member variable of type stack (from the STL).
– StackAdapter defines functions corresponding to the ones in your original stack class
– Some of the functions do nothing more than call corresponding functions of the STL stack
– Other functions act as adapters between the old and new semantics
The StackAdapter Classtemplate <class E>class StackAdapter {
public:push(E val) {s.push(val);}
E pop() {E x = s.peek();s.pop();return x;
}
bool isEmpty() {return s.empty();}
private:stack<E> s;
}
The Adapter Pattern
• Plan B employs a design pattern known as Adapter
• The Adapter pattern
Converts the interface of a class into another interface clients expect. Adapter lets classes work together that otherwise couldn’t because of incompatible interfaces
The Adapter Pattern Visually
StackAdapter
push()pop()
isEmpty()
Stack
push()pop()
empty()
s.isEmpty()
x = s. pop()s.pop();return x;
s
You May Have Seen Something Similar• For example, when coding binary search…
– The recursive call for binary search is
bool binsrch(int a[], int lo, int hi)
… but the user wants to make the callbool binsearch(int a[], int n)
– We resolve this by adding an intermediate function:
bool binsearch(int a[], int n) {return binsrch(a, 0, n-1);
}
This is the a procedural analogy of the Adapter pattern; binsearch is usually called a wrapper function.
Design Patterns
• Introduced by architect Christopher Alexander (A
Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction) in the context of buildings and towns:
“Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, the describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use the solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.”
Architectural Design Patterns
• “A PLACE TO WAIT”– Bus stop
– Waiting room• adresses the common aspects of their design
• “ARCADES” - “covered walkways at edges of buildings, partly inside, partly outside”
http://architypes.net/patterns.php
‘The Gang of Four’ Book• Introduced design patterns
to software design
• Much of this talk based upon this text
• In fact, it’s fair to say that one purpose of this talk is to provide a guide to how to read this text
• Bulk of text is a catalog of patterns
Why Only ‘Object-Oriented’?
• Wouldn’t this have been useful before as well? – ‘Designing object-oriented software is hard, and designing
reusable objected-oriented software is even harder’ (Opening sentence of
‘Design Patterns’, Gamma, et al)
• The number and complexity of classes, objects and their interactions makes proper design a formidable task
– Also, might have been applicable before, but OOP (compared to say, procedural) ‘maxes’ out on reusability
• More opportunities for reuseable design• Everybody says that, but let’s see why
OOP and Reusability
• So WHAT makes objected-oriented software more reusable than say applications designed and coded in a procedural style?– Classes?
– Inheritance
– Overloaded operators?
– Access control?
• Allows one class to incorporate (reuse) another class’s implementation as part of its own
• All state (variables) and behavior (functions) of the existing (super/base/parent)class become part of the new (sub/child)class.
• Subclass can then add its own state/behavior
• The subclass is said to be a subtype of the superclass’ type
Not available in traditional procedural languages
Reusability Mechanisms – Inheritance
class Counter {Counter() {val = 0;}void up(val++;}void down() {val--;}int get() {return val;}
int val;}
Reusability Mechanisms - Inheritance
class BoundedCounter extends Counter {
BoundedCounter(int m) {max = m;
}void up() {
if (val < max) val++;}
int max;}
• Assembling or composing objects to get new functionality
• Basically one class contained as a variable of another
• Reusability comes from– The containing object (re)using the functionality of the contained
object(s)• … and thus avoiding implementing that behavior on its own
– Somewhat available in traditional procedural languages
Reusability Mechanisms - Composition
class SSNum {boolean equals(SSNum other) {
…}…
}
Reusability Mechanisms - Composition
class Employee {boolean equals(Employee other) {
return id.equals(other.id);}…SSNum id;
}
• One object carries out a request by delegating it to a second object (typically an instance variable of the first)
• Used widely in the context of composition, especially as a way of obtaining some of the flavor of inheritance
• In the previous example, the Employee object delegated the equality test to the (composed) Name object.
Somewhat available in traditional procedural languages
Reusability Mechanisms - Delegation
• A set of function signatures (no bodies)
• Can be thought of as representing a type
• Can be specified in C++ via abstract classses and in Java via interfaces.
• A class (i.e., with function bodies) is said to implement the interface if the class defines (I.e., supplies bodies for) all the interface’s functions
– As with inheritance, the implementing class is also said to be a subtype of the interface’s type
Not available in traditional procedural languages
Reusability Mechanisms - Interfaces
interface Collection {boolean add(Object obj);boolean remove(Object obj);int size();boolean isEmpty();
}
Reusability Mechanisms - Interfaces
The Is-a Relationship
• An object of a subtype is compatible with the corresponding (parent) type.
• The object of the subtype is considered an object of the type as well
• This is known as the ‘is-a’ relationship…
• … and is the basis for much of the reusability of OOP
‘Is-a’ in the Context of Inheritance
• An object of a subclass is compatible with the parent class’ type
– Thus given a Counter variable, a BoundedCounter object can be assigned to that variable:
BoundedCounter bctr;Counter ctr = bctr;
‘Is-a’ in the Context of Interface
• An object of a class implementing an interface is compatible with the interface’s type
– Thus assuming Set implements the Collection interface. given a Collection variable, a Set object can be assigned to that variable:
Set set; Collection coll = set;
So What???
• Given an interface, Collection, write a method, contains that returns true if a specified object belongs to a specified collection.
boolean contains(Collection coll, Object obj) {for(Object element : coll)
if (element.equals(obj)) return true;return false;
}
contains can accept (as the coll parameter) a Set, a Vector, in fact any class that implements the Collection interface.
Only one contains function need be written for a whole family of different (though related by the Collection interface) aggregate classes
So What II???
• The similarity of classes conforming to an interface provides the opportunity for them to employ the same pattern/solution to a problem– Providing a solution in the form of an interface (i.e., a set of
methods) in turn provides a solution for ANY class that implements that interface.
– Implementing that interface means that the solution is available
– For example, the constructor that accepts a Collection can be used by all Collection classes since it employs only methods specified in the Collection interface and thus us available to all Collections!
Describing Design Patterns
• Recall our Flywheel
• In addition to presenting the flywheel we also presented– Motivation– Purpose– Application– Advantages/disadvantages
Describing Design Patterns
• Design Patterns are presented in a similar (fairly standardized) fashion
Pattern Description - Name
• Name should be a good reflection of the pattern’s purpose
Adapter
Pattern Description - Intent
• A statement answering:– What does the pattern do?
– What is its rationale?
– What problem does it address?
Adapter converts the interface of a class into another interface clients expect. Adapter lets classes work together that otherwise couldn’t because of incompatible interfaces
Pattern Description – Also Known As
• Other names by which the pattern is known
Wrapper
Pattern Description – Motivation
• A scenario that illustrates the problem and its solution via the classes and structures of the pattern
Our CISC 3130/STL Stack problem and solution
Pattern Description – Applicability
• Under what circumstances can the pattern be applied?
• What are examples of poor designs that the pattern can address?
• How can such situations be recognized?
Use Adapter when:
– You want to use an existing class and its interface does not match the one you need
• A graphical representation of the relationships among the classes/objects in the pattern
Pattern Description – Structure
Client Target
Request()
Adapter
Request() adaptee.specificRequest()
Adaptee
SpecificRequest()
adaptee
ClassInterfaceImplemented method()Abstract method()
method pseudo-code
Instance variable
subtype
Pattern Description – Participants
• The classes and objects participating in the pattern
– Target (the interface consisting of push, pop, isEmpty)• Defines the specific interface that Client uses
– Client (Your 3130 program)• Interacts with objects conforming to the Target interface
– Adaptee (STL stack type)• Defines an existing interface that needs adapting
– Adapter (StackAdapter)• Adapts the interface of Adaptee to the Target interface
Pattern Description – Collaborations
• How the participants interact to realize the pattern
– Clients call operations on an Adapter object• In turn the adapter calls Adaptee operations
Pattern Description – Consequences
• What are the trade-offs and results of using the pattern?
– How much adapting does Adapter do?• Simple name changes all the way to supporting completely different
set of operations
There are several other consequences we won’t address here
Pattern Description – Implementation
• Pitfalls, hints, techniques?
• Language-dependent issues?
Fairly straightforward
There are some language issues, but again, not for now
Pattern Description – Sample code
We’ll just let our example be the sample code
Pattern Description – Known uses
• Examples from real systems
Take a look at Gamma
Pattern Description – Related Patterns
• What other patterns are closely related to this one?
• What are the similarities? Differences?
• Which patterns use this pattern?
• Which patterns does this pattern use?
This was our first one!
Too early to supply answers for this
Why are Design Patterns Useful?• Avoids ‘reinventing the wheel’
• Avoids making the same mistakes over and over again
• Knowledge of a particular design pattern (like Adapter) is valuable…
• … but so is simply knowing about the concept of a design pattern• Knowing there are catalogs of patterns addressing design issues• Gets you thinking about design problems differently
Another Example
• Adapter was an example of a Structural design pattern– Structural patterns are concerned with how classes and
objects are composed to form larger structures.
• Our next example will present a Creational design pattern– Creational patterns help make a system independent of
how its objects are created and represented.
Another Example
• Us folks at – Provide interactive programming exercises
– Students submit solution code to our server which• Does operational and textual checks• Provides feedback
– In addition, there is a context-sensitive glossary/help system
• Generates hypertext links into the glossary, ‘on-the-fly’, for instructions and feedback
Creating a Glossary Object
Glossary glossary = new Glossary();
• Issues– Glossary is quite large – one is OK, but what if
there are tens (or hundreds) of concurrent users?
– No need for more than one glossary• It’s a query-only object
Creating a Glossary Object
• Is there a way to prevent more than one Glossary object from being created?
– The expression
glossary = new Glossary() creates a new instance each time
• And if we can restrict to one instance, how does the rest of the application access that single instance?– C++ could use a global variable (but how would we know where it
is?)– What about Java?
Singleton Design Pattern - Intent
Ensure a class has only one instance and provide a global point of access to it
Singleton - Motivation
• Just gave it to you, but since you asked– Ensuring single print spooler in a system– Ensuring a single buffer/node pool
Singleton - Applicability
• Applicability: – Used when
• There must be exactly one instance, which must be accessible from a well-known point
Singleton
static instance()
singletonOperation()
getSingletonData()
static uniqueInstance
singletonData
Singleton - Structure
return uniqueInstance
Singleton - Participants
• Participants– Singleton
• Defines an instance operation that allows clients to access its unique instance– instance is a class (i.e., static) function/method
• May be responsible for creating its own unique instance
Singleton - Collaborations
• Collaborations– Clients access a Singleton instance solely
through the instance operation
Singleton - Consequences
• Controlled access to single instance• Reduced name space
– No global variables
• Can permit variable number of instances– I lied– it’s actually one glossary per language
glossary = new Glossary(“Java”)
Singleton - Implementation
class Glossary {public static Glossary getGlossary() {
if (glossary == null)glossary = new Glossary();
return glossary;}
private Glossary();private Glossary glossary;
}
Note the private Glossary constructor
Singleton – ImplementationMultiple Instances
class Glossary {public static Glossary getGlossary(String language) {
Glossary glossary = map.get(language);if (glossary == null) {
glossary = new Glossary(language);map.put(language, glossary);
}return glossary;
}
private Glossary(String language);private Map<String, Glossary> = new HashMap<String, Glossary>;
}
Note the private Glossary constructor
Behavioral Patterns
• Structural and creational patterns are two of the three pattern purposes, the third being behavioral patterns
• Behavioral patterns are concerned with – algorithms – the assignment of responsibilities between objects– the patterns of communication between objects/classes– characterize complex control flow
• We’ll now present Observer, a behavioral pattern which is probably one of the most elegant patterns of all
This is not Your Father’s Oldsmobile
• On a typical mid-to-high-end car these days– rain sensors turn on the wipers– wipers turn on the lights– shifting out of park turns on day running lights– turning on radio raises antenna– pressing brake disengages cruise control– and a host of other interactions between
sometimes seemingly unrelated components
One Particular Set of Interacting Components
• Let’s focus on just three components– The interior light– The interior light switch
• Turning to ‘on’ turns on the interior light
– The car door• Opening turns on the interior light
Let’s Code a Car Class
class Car {…// Instance variablesDoor door = new Door();InteriorLightSwitch interiorLightSwitch = new InteriorLightSwitch();InteriorLight interiorLight = new InteriorLight();
}
The InteriorLight Class
class InteriorLight {
public boolean isOn() {return amOn;}void setOn(boolean b) {
if (amOn != b) {amOn = b;System.err.println("interior light turned “ + (amOn ? "on" : "off"));
}}boolean amOn = false;
}
The InteriorLightSwitch Class
class InteriorLightSwitch {
public boolean isOn() {return amOn;}void setOn(boolean b) {
if (amOn != b) {amOn = b;System.err.println("interior light switch “ + “moved to “ +
(amOn ? "on" : off"));interiorLight.setOn(amOn);
}}boolean amOn = false;
}
The Door Class
class Door {
public boolean isOpen() {return amOpen;}void setOpen(boolean b) {
if (amOpen != b) {amOpen = b;System.err.println("door " + (amOpen ? "opened" : "closed"));interiorLight.setOn(amOpen);
}}boolean amOpen = false;
}
Mind Your Own Business
• Door knows it should turn on light• Interior switch knows it should turn on light• An alarm module (keyless entry) would also have to
turn on light
Who should know when to turn on the interior light?
More Issues
• In ‘luxury’ model opening door causes seat to slide back– Now door must know to turn on light and slide seat
back
• But what about non-’luxury’ cars?– Separate door mechanism for luxury/non-luxury?
– Luxury/non-luxury models ‘wired’ differently?
‘Spaghetti’ Responsibility Logic
• Turning on wiper switch– Must know to turn on wipers
– Wipers in turn must know to turn on headlights and activate 4WD sensor
– Headlights must know to dim radio display
‘Spaghetti’ Responsibility Logic
• Pressing brake– Turns on ‘upper rear brake light’
– Turns on brake lights
– Disengages cruise control, but only if that option is present
– Initiates ALB sensor
‘Spaghetti’ Responsibility Logic
• Every component must know about all components dependent upon it– Furthermore, every component becomes responsible for
those components
Still Not Convinced??
Well how about if I tell you that our implementation is wrong?
A Sample Car interaction
public static void main(String [] args) {
Car car = new Car();car.door.setOpen(true); System.err.println(car);car.door.setOpen(false); System.err.println(car);car.interiorLightSwitch.setOn(true); System.err.println(car);car.door.setOpen(true); System.err.println(car);car.door.setOpen(false); System.err.println(car);
}
The Output
door openedinterior light turned on (as a result of opening the door) door: opened / interior light: on / interior light switch: offdoor closedinterior light turned off (as a result of closing the door) door: closed / interior light: off / interior light switch: offinterior light switch moved to oninterior light turned on (as a result of turning the switch on) door: closed / interior light: on / interior light switch: ondoor opened (no light action -- light already on) door: opened / interior light: on / interior light switch: ondoor closedinterior light turned off (as a result of closing the door – but the
switch is still on!)
door: closed / interior light: off / interior light switch: on
OOP = Responsibility-Driven Programming
• Goal is for objects (components) to be responsible for themselves
• ‘Decoupling’ objects simplifies the design
• The simpler, more self-responsible objects are easier to reuse
The Observer Design Pattern - Intent
Define a (many to one) dependency between objects so that when one object changes state, all its
dependents are notified and updated automatically
Observer - Applicability
• Use Observer when either– A change to one object requires changing others, and
you don’t know how many others need to be changed
– An object should be able to notify other objects without making assumptions about who those objects are (minimize coupling between the objects)
Observer - Structure
from Wikipedia
The Observer Interface
interface Observer {void notify();
}
• An Observer’s notify method is called (by the Subject object) when the Subject object has changed.
The Observable Superclass
class Subject {void registerObserver(Observer observer) {
observers.add(observer);}
void notifyObservers() {for (observer : observers)
observer.notify();}
Set<Observer> observers = new HashSet<Observer>();}
The InteriorLight Classclass InteriorLight implements Observer {
InteriorLight(InteriorLightSwitch interiorLightSwitch, Door door) {this.interiorLightSwitch = interiorLightSwitch; this.door = door;interiorLightSwitch.registerObserver(this);door.registerObserver(this);
}
public boolean isOn() {return amOn;}private void setOn(boolean b) {
if (amOn != b) {amOn = b;System.err.println("interior light turned " + (amOn ? "on" : "off"));
}}
public void notify() {setOn(interiorLightSwitch.isOn() || door.isOpen());
}
boolean amOn = false;InteriorLightSwitch interiorLightSwitch;Door door;
}
The InteriorLightSwitch Class
class InteriorLightSwitch extends Subject {public boolean isOn() {return amOn;}void setOn(boolean b) {
if (amOn != b) {amOn = b;System.err.println("interior light switch “ + “moved to " +
(amOn ? "on" : "off"));notifyObservers();
}}boolean amOn = false;
}
The Door Class
class Door extends Subject {
public boolean isOpen() {return amOpen;}void setOpen(boolean b) {
if (amOpen != b) {amOpen = b;System.err.println("door " + (amOpen ? "opened" : "closed"));notifyObservers();
}}
boolean amOpen = false;}
The Output This Time
door openedinterior light turned on door: opened / interior light: on / interior light switch: offdoor closedinterior light turned off door: closed / interior light: off / interior light switch: offinterior light switch moved to oninterior light turned on door: closed / interior light: on / interior light switch: ondoor opened door: opened / interior light: on / interior light switch: ondoor closed door: closed / interior light: on / interior light switch: oninterior light switch moved to offinterior light turned off door: closed / interior light: off / interior light switch: off
Minimizing Hard-coding
• The CodeLab engine can check exercises for any language that has a compiler
• An appropriate set of tools and entities– compilers, linkers, compiler message analyzers, glossaries – must be created specific to the language
• We want this done without hard-coding any knowledge of particular languages into the engine
• This is accomplished using the Factory Method pattern
Maintaining Consistency
• Furthermore, the language-specific tools used in an exercise must be consistent with each other (i.e., be restricted to tools of that specific language).
• This is addressed using the Abstract Factory pattern
• This design was introduced into the engine by Josh Goldsmith as part of his 88.1 project.
Invoking the Tools
• Many of the tools used to build and test exercises form tree-like hierarchies of sorts
Java Tool
Java Compiler Tool
Java Interpreter Tool
C++ Tool
C++ Compiler Tool
C++ Linker Tool
Executable Tool
• A Java Tool is executed by executing a Java Compiler Tool followed by executing a Java Interpreter Tool
• Similarly for the C++ Tool
Treating Individual Objects and Compositions Identically
• Sometimes a full Java Tool is launched
• Other times simply the Java Compiler Tool
• We want to launch and subsequently process both tools (the composite Java Tool and the atomic Java Compiler Tool) identically
• This is achieved using the Composite pattern
Filtering Streams
• When processing submissions and exercise output, we often want to– Remove whitespace completely
– Remove a final trailing linefeed
– Compress multiple whitespace to a single whitespace
– Remove comments
– Ignore case
• This is done using the Strategy pattern
Iteration
• Any class implementing the Collection interface must supply a uniform means of iterating over its elements.
• This is done via the Iterator pattern
Whew!
• In summary– Design patterns provide highly flexible, reusable
solutions to commonly arising design situations
– Patterns are recognized as valuable repositories of information based upon analysis and experience
– Catalogs exist enumerating collections of patterns
– Conscious use of patterns is widespread