Composite pattern

In software engineering, the composite pattern is a partitioning design pattern. The composite pattern describes that a group of objects is to be treated in the same way as a single instance of an 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.[1]

Motivation

When dealing with Tree-structured data, programmers often have to discriminate between a leaf-node and a branch. This makes code more complex, and therefore, error prone. The solution is an interface that allows treating complex and primitive objects uniformly. In object-oriented programming, a composite is an object designed as a composition of one-or-more similar objects, all exhibiting similar functionality. This is known as a "has-a" relationship between objects.[2] The key concept is that you can manipulate a single instance of the object just as you would manipulate a group of them. The operations you can perform on all the composite objects often have a least common denominator relationship. For example, if defining a system to portray grouped shapes on a screen, it would be useful to define resizing a group of shapes to have the same effect (in some sense) as resizing a single shape.

When to use

Composite should be used when clients ignore the difference between compositions of objects and individual objects.[1] If programmers find that they are using multiple objects in the same way, and often have nearly identical code to handle each of them, then composite is a good choice; it is less complex in this situation to treat primitives and composites as homogeneous.

Structure

Composite pattern in UML.
Component
Leaf
Composite
Composite pattern in LePUS3.

Variation

As it is described in Design Patterns, the pattern also involves including the child-manipulation methods in the main Component interface, not just the Composite subclass. More recent descriptions sometimes omit these methods.[3]

Example

The following example, written in Java, implements a graphic class, which can be either an ellipse or a composition of several graphics. Every graphic can be printed. In Backus-Naur form,

       Graphic ::= ellipse | GraphicList
       GraphicList ::= empty | Graphic GraphicList

It could be extended to implement several other shapes (rectangle, etc.) and methods (translate, etc.).

Java 

/** "Component" */
interface Graphic {

    //Prints the graphic.
    public void print();
}

/** "Composite" */
import java.util.List;
import java.util.ArrayList;
class CompositeGraphic implements Graphic {

    //Collection of child graphics.
    private List<Graphic> childGraphics = new ArrayList<Graphic>();

    //Prints the graphic.
    public void print() {
        for (Graphic graphic : childGraphics) {
            graphic.print();
        }
    }

    //Adds the graphic to the composition.
    public void add(Graphic graphic) {
        childGraphics.add(graphic);
    }

    //Removes the graphic from the composition.
    public void remove(Graphic graphic) {
        childGraphics.remove(graphic);
    }
}

/** "Leaf" */
class Ellipse implements Graphic {

    //Prints the graphic.
    public void print() {
        System.out.println("Ellipse");
    }
}

/** Client */
public class Program {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        //Initialize four ellipses
        Ellipse ellipse1 = new Ellipse();
        Ellipse ellipse2 = new Ellipse();
        Ellipse ellipse3 = new Ellipse();
        Ellipse ellipse4 = new Ellipse();

        //Initialize three composite graphics
        CompositeGraphic graphic = new CompositeGraphic();
        CompositeGraphic graphic1 = new CompositeGraphic();
        CompositeGraphic graphic2 = new CompositeGraphic();

        //Composes the graphics
        graphic1.add(ellipse1);
        graphic1.add(ellipse2);
        graphic1.add(ellipse3);

        graphic2.add(ellipse4);

        graphic.add(graphic1);
        graphic.add(graphic2);

        //Prints the complete graphic (four times the string "Ellipse").
        graphic.print();
    }
}

C#

The following example, written in C#. 

namespace CompositePattern
{
    using System;
    using System.Collections.Generic;
    using System.Linq;
    //Client
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // initialize variables
            var compositeGraphic = new CompositeGraphic();
            var compositeGraphic1 = new CompositeGraphic();
            var compositeGraphic2 = new CompositeGraphic();

            //Add 1 Graphic to compositeGraphic1
            compositeGraphic1.Add(new Ellipse());

            //Add 2 Graphic to compositeGraphic2
            compositeGraphic2.AddRange(new Ellipse(), 
                new Ellipse());

            /*Add 1 Graphic, compositeGraphic1, and 
              compositeGraphic2 to compositeGraphic */
            compositeGraphic.AddRange(new Ellipse(), 
                compositeGraphic1, 
                compositeGraphic2);

            /*Prints the complete graphic 
            (four times the string "Ellipse").*/
            compositeGraphic.Print();
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
    //Component
    public interface IGraphic
    {
        void Print();
    }
    //Leaf
    public class Ellipse : IGraphic
    {
        //Prints the graphic
    	public void Print()
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Ellipse");
        }
    }
    //Composite
    public class CompositeGraphic : IGraphic
    {
        //Collection of Graphics.
        private readonly List<IGraphic> graphics;

        //Constructor 
        public CompositeGraphic()
        {
            //initialize generic Collection(Composition)
            graphics = new List<IGraphic>();
        }
        //Adds the graphic to the composition
        public void Add(IGraphic graphic)
        {
            graphics.Add(graphic);
        }
        //Adds multiple graphics to the composition
        public void AddRange(params IGraphic[] graphic)
        {
            graphics.AddRange(graphic);
        }
        //Removes the graphic from the composition
        public void Delete(IGraphic graphic)
        {
            graphics.Remove(graphic);
        }
        //Prints the graphic.
        public void Print()
        {
            foreach (var childGraphic in graphics)
            {
                childGraphic.Print();
            }
        }
    }
}
//////Ad

Simple example 

/// Treats elements as composition of one or more elements, so that components can be separated
/// between one another
public interface IComposite
{
    void CompositeMethod();
}

public class LeafComposite :IComposite 
{
    public void CompositeMethod()
    {
        //To Do something
    }
}

/// Elements from IComposite can be separated from others 
public class NormalComposite : IComposite
{
    public void CompositeMethod()
    {
        //To Do Something
    }

    public void DoSomethingMore()
    {
        //Do Something more .
    }
}

See also

External links

The Wikibook Computer Science Design Patterns has a page on the topic of: Composite implementations in various languages

References

  1. 1 2 Gamma, Erich; Richard Helm; Ralph Johnson; John M. Vlissides (1995). Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. Addison-Wesley. p. 395. ISBN 0-201-63361-2.
  2. ↑ Scott Walters (2004). Perl Design Patterns Book.
  3. ↑ Geary, David (13 Sep 2002). "A look at the Composite design pattern".
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