Observer Design Pattern
According to GoF, observer design pattern intent is;
Define a one-to-many dependency between objects so that when one object
changes state, all its dependents are notified and updated automatically.
Subject contains a list of observers to notify of any change in it’s state, so it
should provide methods using which observers can register and unregister
themselves. Subject also contain a method to notify all the observers of any
change and either it can send the update while notifying the observer or it can
provide another method to get the update.
Observer should have a method to set the object to watch and another
method that will be used by Subject to notify them of any updates.
Java provides inbuilt platform for implementing Observer pattern
through [Link] class and [Link] interface. However
it’s not widely used because the implementation is really simple and most of
the times we don’t want to end up extending a class just for implementing
Observer pattern as java doesn’t provide multiple inheritance in classes.
Java Message Service (JMS) uses Observer design pattern along
with Mediator pattern to allow applications to subscribe and publish data to
other applications.
Model-View-Controller (MVC) frameworks also use Observer pattern where
Model is the Subject and Views are observers that can register to get notified
of any change to the model.
Observer Pattern Java Example
For our observer pattern java program example, we would implement a simple
topic and observers can register to this topic. Whenever any new message
will be posted to the topic, all the registers observers will be notified and they
can consume the message.
Based on the requirements of Subject, here is the base Subject interface that
defines the contract methods to be implemented by any concrete subject.
public interface Subject {
//methods to register and unregister observers
public void register(Observer obj);
public void unregister(Observer obj);
//method to notify observers of change
public void notifyObservers();
//method to get updates from subject
public Object getUpdate(Observer obj);
Next we will create contract for Observer, there will be a method to attach the
Subject to the observer and another method to be used by Subject to notify of
any change.
public interface Observer {
//method to update the observer, used by subject
public void update();
//attach with subject to observe
public void setSubject(Subject sub);
}
Now our contract is ready, let’s proceed with the concrete implementation of
our topic.
import [Link];
import [Link];
public class MyTopic implements Subject {
private List<Observer> observers;
private String message;
private boolean changed;
private final Object MUTEX= new Object();
public MyTopic(){
[Link]=new ArrayList<>();
}
@Override
public void register(Observer obj) {
if(obj == null) throw new
NullPointerException("Null Observer");
synchronized (MUTEX) {
if() [Link](obj);
}
}
@Override
public void unregister(Observer obj) {
synchronized (MUTEX) {
[Link](obj);
}
}
@Override
public void notifyObservers() {
List<Observer> observersLocal = null;
//synchronization is used to make sure any observer
registered after message is received is not notified
synchronized (MUTEX) {
if (!changed)
return;
observersLocal = new
ArrayList<>([Link]);
[Link]=false;
}
for (Observer obj : observersLocal) {
[Link]();
}
@Override
public Object getUpdate(Observer obj) {
return [Link];
}
//method to post message to the topic
public void postMessage(String msg){
[Link]("Message Posted to Topic:"+msg);
[Link]=msg;
[Link]=true;
notifyObservers();
}
The method implementation to register and unregister an observer is very
simple, the extra method is postMessage() that will be used by client
application to post String message to the topic. Notice the boolean variable to
keep track of the change in the state of topic and used in notifying observers.
This variable is required so that if there is no update and somebody
calls notifyObservers() method, it doesn’t send false notifications to the
observers.
Also notice the use of synchronization in notifyObservers() method to make
sure the notification is sent only to the observers registered before the
message is published to the topic.
Here is the implementation of Observers that will watch over the subject.
public class MyTopicSubscriber implements Observer {
private String name;
private Subject topic;
public MyTopicSubscriber(String nm){
[Link]=nm;
}
@Override
public void update() {
String msg = (String) [Link](this);
if(msg == null){
[Link](name+":: No new message");
}else
[Link](name+":: Consuming
message::"+msg);
}
@Override
public void setSubject(Subject sub) {
[Link]=sub;
}
Notice the implementation of update() method where it’s calling
Subject getUpdate() method to get the message to consume. We could have
avoided this call by passing message as argument to update() method.
Here is a simple test program to consume our topic implementation.
public class ObserverPatternTest {
public static void main(String[] args) {
//create subject
MyTopic topic = new MyTopic();
//create observers
Observer obj1 = new MyTopicSubscriber("Obj1");
Observer obj2 = new MyTopicSubscriber("Obj2");
Observer obj3 = new MyTopicSubscriber("Obj3");
//register observers to the subject
[Link](obj1);
[Link](obj2);
[Link](obj3);
//attach observer to subject
[Link](topic);
[Link](topic);
[Link](topic);
//check if any update is available
[Link]();
//now send message to subject
[Link]("New Message");
}
When we run above program, we get following output.
Obj1:: No new message
Message Posted to Topic:New Message
Obj1:: Consuming message::New Message
Obj2:: Consuming message::New Message
Obj3:: Consuming message::New Message
Java Observer Pattern Class Diagram
Observer design pattern is also called as publish-subscribe pattern. Some of
it’s implementations are;
[Link] in Swing
[Link]
[Link]
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