Review - Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented SoftwareDesign Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Erich Gamma
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Depending on on how you think of programming, this book could be incredibly insightful, or horribly abstract and impractical. Since I prefer and tend to think in patterns and abstractions, I found this book close to my heart. It uses a variety of languages for examples, so a willingness to explore concepts, not practical solutions, is essential.

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Multiton

A fairly simple example of the multiton pattern, with a private constructor, and a tracker for created objects, the name being an integer identifier.

Salient Chacteristic(s)
A private keyed list for tracking objectsA private constructorNamed objectsCode

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

namespace DesignPatterns
{
    public class Multiton
    {
        //read-only dictionary to track multitons
        private static IDictionary<int, Multiton> _Tracker = new Dictionary<int, Multiton> { };

        private Multiton()
        {
        }

        public static Multiton GetInstance(int key)
        {
            //value to return
            Multiton item = null;

            //lock collection to prevent changes during operation
            lock (_Tracker)
            { 
                //if value not found, create and add
                if(!_Tracker.TryGetValue(key, out item))
                {
                    item = new Multiton();

                    //calculate next key
       …
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Decorator Pattern

This is an example of the Decorator pattern, in this case a decorator for ObservableCollection.  Working with WPF and ObservableCollection using threads, one will run into the problem whereby the ObservableCollection cannot be updated from outside the owning thread; Delegates and Invoke will not work. A solution is to contain and expand the class, as is done in this example on michIG's Blog.

This linked file contains the original code in C#, as well as the same code converted to VB.NET.

Salient Characteristic(s)
Sets an internal pointer to the decorated object, sending method calls and property actions to the internal objectExtends the object by wrapping it and adding some aspect handled by the decorator
Code

using System;
using System.Collections.ObjectModel;
using System.Windows.Threading;
using System.Collections.Specialized;
using System.ComponentModel;

namespace DesignPatterns
{
    /// <summary>  
    /// This class is an observablecollection which invokes automatically.  
    /// T…
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