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Gang Of Four Design Patterns

The Gang of Four (GoF) Design Patterns, popularized by the book "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software", are a catalog of solutions to common software design problems. These patterns provide a vocabulary and blueprint for object-oriented programmers to structure their code effectively.

  • Creational Patterns: These patterns deal with object creation and provide mechanisms to control how objects are instantiated.
    • Examples: Singleton, Factory Method, Prototype, Builder
  • Structural Patterns: These patterns focus on how objects and classes are structured and composed to form larger structures.
    • Examples: Adapter, Facade, Composite, Decorator
  • Behavioral Patterns: These patterns define how objects communicate and collaborate with each other to achieve a specific behavior.
    • Examples: Strategy, Observer, Template Method, Iterator

Creational Design Patterns

  • Abstract Factory. Allows the creation of objects without specifying their concrete type.
  • Builder. Uses to create complex objects.
  • Factory Method. Creates objects without specifying the exact class to create.
  • Prototype. Creates a new object from an existing object.
  • Singleton. Ensures only one instance of an object is created.

Structural Design Patterns

  • Adapter. Allows for two incompatible classes to work together by wrapping an interface around one of the existing classes.
  • Bridge. Decouples an abstraction so two classes can vary independently.
  • Composite. Takes a group of objects into a single object.
  • Decorator. Allows for an object’s behavior to be extended dynamically at run time.
  • Facade. Provides a simple interface to a more complex underlying object.
  • Flyweight. Reduces the cost of complex object models.
  • Proxy. Provides a placeholder interface to an underlying object to control access, reduce cost, or reduce complexity.

Behavior Design Patterns

  • Chain of Responsibility. Delegates commands to a chain of processing objects.
  • Command. Creates objects which encapsulate actions and parameters.
  • Interpreter. Implements a specialized language.
  • Iterator. Accesses the elements of an object sequentially without exposing its underlying representation.
  • Mediator. Allows loose coupling between classes by being the only class that has detailed knowledge of their methods.
  • Memento. Provides the ability to restore an object to its previous state.
  • Observer. Is a publish/subscribe pattern which allows a number of observer objects to see an event.
  • State. Allows an object to alter its behavior when its internal state changes.
  • Strategy. Allows one of a family of algorithms to be selected on-the-fly at run-time.
  • Template Method. Defines the skeleton of an algorithm as an abstract class, allowing its sub-classes to provide concrete behavior.
  • Visitor. Separates an algorithm from an object structure by moving the hierarchy of methods into one object.

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