State pattern

Last updated

The state pattern is a behavioral software design pattern that allows an object to alter its behavior when its internal state changes. This pattern is close to the concept of finite-state machines. The state pattern can be interpreted as a strategy pattern, which is able to switch a strategy through invocations of methods defined in the pattern's interface.

Contents

The state pattern is used in computer programming to encapsulate varying behavior for the same object, based on its internal state. This can be a cleaner way for an object to change its behavior at runtime without resorting to conditional statements and thus improve maintainability. [1] :395

Overview

A sample UML class and sequence diagram for the State design pattern. W3sDesign State Design Pattern UML.jpg
A sample UML class and sequence diagram for the State design pattern.

The state design pattern is one of twenty-three design patterns documented by the Gang of Four that describe how to solve recurring design problems. Such problems cover the design of flexible and reusable object-oriented software, such as objects that are easy to implement, change, test, and reuse. [3]

The state pattern is set to solve two main problems: [4]

Implementing state-specific behavior directly within a class is inflexible because it commits the class to a particular behavior and makes it impossible to add a new state or change the behavior of an existing state later, independently from the class, without changing the class. In this, the pattern describes two solutions:

This makes a class independent of how state-specific behavior is implemented. New states can be added by defining new state classes. A class can change its behavior at run-time by changing its current state object.

Structure

State in UML State Design Pattern UML Class Diagram.svg
State in UML

In the accompanying Unified Modeling Language (UML) class diagram, the Context class doesn't implement state-specific behavior directly. Instead, Context refers to the State interface for performing state-specific behavior (state.handle()), which makes Context independent of how state-specific behavior is implemented. The ConcreteStateA and ConcreteStateB classes implement the State interface, that is, implement (encapsulate) the state-specific behavior for each state. The UML sequence diagram shows the run-time interactions:

The Context object delegates state-specific behavior to different State objects. First, Context calls handle(this) on its current (initial) state object (ConcreteStateA), which performs the operation and calls setState(ConcreteStateB) on Context to change context's current state to ConcreteStateB. The next time, Context again calls handle(this) on its current state object (ConcreteStateB), which performs the operation and changes context's current state to ConcreteStateA.

See also

Related Research Articles

<i>Design Patterns</i> 1994 software engineering book

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (1994) is a software engineering book describing software design patterns. The book was written by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides, with a foreword by Grady Booch. The book is divided into two parts, with the first two chapters exploring the capabilities and pitfalls of object-oriented programming, and the remaining chapters describing 23 classic software design patterns. The book includes examples in C++ and Smalltalk.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abstract factory pattern</span> Software design pattern

The abstract factory pattern in software engineering is a design pattern that provides a way to create families of related objects without imposing their concrete classes, by encapsulating a group of individual factories that have a common theme without specifying their concrete classes. According to this pattern, a client software component creates a concrete implementation of the abstract factory and then uses the generic interface of the factory to create the concrete objects that are part of the family. The client does not know which concrete objects it receives from each of these internal factories, as it uses only the generic interfaces of their products. This pattern separates the details of implementation of a set of objects from their general usage and relies on object composition, as object creation is implemented in methods exposed in the factory interface.

In software engineering, the adapter pattern is a software design pattern that allows the interface of an existing class to be used as another interface. It is often used to make existing classes work with others without modifying their source code.

The facade pattern is a software design pattern commonly used in object-oriented programming. Analogous to a façade in architecture, it is an object that serves as a front-facing interface masking more complex underlying or structural code. A facade can:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flyweight pattern</span> Software design pattern for objects

In computer programming, the flyweight software design pattern refers to an object that minimizes memory usage by sharing some of its data with other similar objects. The flyweight pattern is one of twenty-three well-known GoF design patterns. These patterns promote flexible object-oriented software design, which is easier to implement, change, test, and reuse.

The builder pattern is a design pattern that provides a flexible solution to various object creation problems in object-oriented programming. The builder pattern separates the construction of a complex object from its representation. It is one of the 23 classic design patterns described in the book Design Patterns and is sub-categorized as a creational pattern.

In object-oriented programming, the factory method pattern is a design pattern that uses factory methods to deal with the problem of creating objects without having to specify their exact classes. Rather than by calling a constructor, this is accomplished by invoking a factory method to create an object. Factory methods can be specified in an interface and implemented by subclasses or implemented in a base class and optionally overridden by subclasses. It is one of the 23 classic design patterns described in the book Design Patterns and is subcategorized as a creational pattern.

The prototype pattern is a creational design pattern in software development. It is used when the types of objects to create is determined by a prototypical instance, which is cloned to produce new objects. This pattern is used to avoid subclasses of an object creator in the client application, like the factory method pattern does, and to avoid the inherent cost of creating a new object in the standard way when it is prohibitively expensive for a given application.

In software engineering, the composite pattern is a partitioning design pattern. The composite pattern describes a group of objects that are treated the same way as a single instance of the same type of object. The intent of a composite is to "compose" objects into tree structures to represent part-whole hierarchies. Implementing the composite pattern lets clients treat individual objects and compositions uniformly.

In computer programming, the proxy pattern is a software design pattern. A proxy, in its most general form, is a class functioning as an interface to something else. The proxy could interface to anything: a network connection, a large object in memory, a file, or some other resource that is expensive or impossible to duplicate. In short, a proxy is a wrapper or agent object that is being called by the client to access the real serving object behind the scenes. Use of the proxy can simply be forwarding to the real object, or can provide additional logic. In the proxy, extra functionality can be provided, for example caching when operations on the real object are resource intensive, or checking preconditions before operations on the real object are invoked. For the client, usage of a proxy object is similar to using the real object, because both implement the same interface.

In object-oriented programming, the command pattern is a behavioral design pattern in which an object is used to encapsulate all information needed to perform an action or trigger an event at a later time. This information includes the method name, the object that owns the method and values for the method parameters.

In object-oriented programming, the iterator pattern is a design pattern in which an iterator is used to traverse a container and access the container's elements. The iterator pattern decouples algorithms from containers; in some cases, algorithms are necessarily container-specific and thus cannot be decoupled.

In computer programming, the interpreter pattern is a design pattern that specifies how to evaluate sentences in a language. The basic idea is to have a class for each symbol in a specialized computer language. The syntax tree of a sentence in the language is an instance of the composite pattern and is used to evaluate (interpret) the sentence for a client. See also Composite pattern.

In software engineering, the mediator pattern defines an object that encapsulates how a set of objects interact. This pattern is considered to be a behavioral pattern due to the way it can alter the program's running behavior.

In computer programming, the strategy pattern is a behavioral software design pattern that enables selecting an algorithm at runtime. Instead of implementing a single algorithm directly, code receives runtime instructions as to which in a family of algorithms to use.

In software engineering, a design pattern describes a relatively small, well-defined aspect of a computer program in terms of how to write the code.

In computer programming, a software framework is an abstraction in which software, providing generic functionality, can be selectively changed by additional user-written code, thus providing application-specific software. It provides a standard way to build and deploy applications and is a universal, reusable software environment that provides particular functionality as part of a larger software platform to facilitate the development of software applications, products and solutions.

In software engineering, creational design patterns are design patterns that deal with object creation mechanisms, trying to create objects in a manner suitable to the situation. The basic form of object creation could result in design problems or in added complexity to the design due to inflexibility in the creation procedures. Creational design patterns solve this problem by somehow controlling this object creation.

Object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD) is a technical approach for analyzing and designing an application, system, or business by applying object-oriented programming, as well as using visual modeling throughout the software development process to guide stakeholder communication and product quality.

In object-oriented design, the chain-of-responsibility pattern is a behavioral design pattern consisting of a source of command objects and a series of processing objects. Each processing object contains logic that defines the types of command objects that it can handle; the rest are passed to the next processing object in the chain. A mechanism also exists for adding new processing objects to the end of this chain.

References

  1. 1 2 Erich Gamma; Richard Helm; Ralph Johnson; John M. Vlissides (1995). Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. Addison-Wesley. ISBN   0-201-63361-2.
  2. "The State design pattern – Structure and Collaboration". w3sDesign.com. Retrieved 2017-08-12.
  3. Erich Gamma; Richard Helm; Ralph Johnson; John Vlissides (1994). Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software . Addison Wesley. pp.  305ff. ISBN   0-201-63361-2.
  4. "The State design pattern - Problem, Solution, and Applicability". w3sDesign.com. Retrieved 2017-08-12.