Java Best Practices Collection 2001 by Ahmet Haliloglu

Structural Design Patterns

The Adapter Pattern
The Adapter pattern is used to convert the programming interface of one class into that of another. We use adapters whenever we want unrelated classes to work together in a single program. The concept of an adapter is thus pretty simple; we write a class that has the desired interface and then make it communicate with the class that has a different interface. There are two ways to do this: by inheritance, and by object composition. In the first case, we derive a new class from the nonconforming one and add the methods we need to make the new derived class match the desired interface. The other way is to include the original class inside the new one and create the methods to translate calls within the new class. These two approaches, termed class adapters and object adapters are both fairly easy to implement in Java.

The Bridge Pattern
At first sight, the Bridge pattern looks much like the Adapter pattern, in that a class is used to convert one kind of interface to another. However, the intent of the Adapter pattern is to make one or more classes’ interfaces look the same as that of a particular class. The Bridge pattern is designed to separate a class’s interface from its implementation, so that you can vary or replace the implementation without changing the client code.

The Composite Pattern
Frequently programmers develop systems in which a component may be an individual object or it may represent a collection of objects. The Composite pattern is designed to accommodate both cases. You can use the Composite to build part-whole hierarchies or to construct data representations of trees. In summary, a composite is a collection of objects, any one of which may be either a composite, or just a primitive object. In tree nomenclature, some objects may be nodes with additional branches and some may be leaves.

The Façade Pattern
Frequently, as your programs evolve and develop, they grow in complexity. In fact, for all the excitement about using design patterns, these patterns sometimes generate so many classes that it is difficult to understand the program’s flow. Furthermore, there may be a number of complicated subsystems, each of which has its own complex interface.The Façade pattern allows you to simplify this complexity by providing a simplified interface to these subsystems. This simplification may in some cases reduce the flexibility of the underlying classes, but usually provides all the function needed for all but the most sophisticated users. These users can still, of course, access the underlying classes and methods.

The Proxy Pattern
The Proxy pattern is used when you need to represent an object that is complex or time consuming to create, by a simpler one. If creating an object is expensive in time or computer resources, Proxy allows you to postpone this creation until you need the actual object. A Proxy usually has the same methods as the object it represents, and once the object is loaded, it passes on the method calls from the Proxy to the actual object. There are several cases where a Proxy can be useful:
1. If an object, such as a large image, takes a long time to load.
2. If the object is on a remote machine and loading it over the network may be slow, especially during peak network load periods.
3. If the object has limited access rights, the proxy can validate the accesspermissions for that user.

The Decorator pattern, a class that surrounds a given class, adds new capabilities to it, and passes all the unchanged methods to the underlying class.