Analysis

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Analysis

Pattern comparison

Reviewing 3 patterns.

Criteria
creationalAbstract FactoryView pattern
structuralCompositeView pattern
behavioralStateView pattern
Basics
Categorycreationalstructuralbehavioral
SummaryProvide an interface for creating families of related objects without specifying their concrete classes.Compose objects into tree structures to represent part-whole hierarchies and let clients work with individual and composite objects through the same interface.—
IntentProvide an interface for creating families of related objects without specifying their concrete classes.Compose objects into tree structures to represent part-whole hierarchies and let clients work with individual and composite objects through the same interface.Allow an object to alter its behavior when its internal state changes by delegating state-specific behavior to separate state objects.
Decision factors
ProblemClient code needs to create families of related objects, but hardcoding concrete classes makes the code rigid and hard to swap.A system needs to treat individual objects and groups of objects uniformly, but the hierarchy becomes difficult to manage with separate code paths.An object behaves differently depending on its internal state, and conditional logic is becoming hard to manage.
Tradeoffs
  • Adds an extra abstraction layer.
  • Can overcomplicate simple object creation.
  • Makes family-wide swapping and consistency much easier.
  • Can make the design more abstract and harder to follow.
  • May require careful handling of operations that only apply to some nodes in the tree.
  • Makes recursive tree operations and client code much simpler.
  • Can introduce many small classes if the state graph is large
  • State transitions may become harder to trace if spread across multiple classes
Practical fit
Languages
  • typescript
  • java
  • python
  • react
  • angular
  • csharp
  • dotnet
  • typescript
  • java
  • python
  • angular
  • react
  • react-native
  • csharp
  • dotnet
  • typescript
  • java
  • python
  • angular
  • react
  • react-native
  • csharp
  • dotnet
Platforms
  • applications
  • ui systems
  • integration layers
  • web
  • backend
  • mobile
  • ui kits
  • cross-platform systems
  • Web
  • Backend
  • Mobile
  • UI kits
  • Cross-platform systems
Integration notesAbstract Factory is especially useful when your app must produce matching sets of related objects for a theme, provider, platform, or pipeline.Composite is useful when a hierarchy of nested objects should expose a common interface, such as files and folders, menus and submenus, org charts, widget trees, or scene graphs.State is useful for workflows, media players, order lifecycles, and any domain where behavior changes as the object moves through a lifecycle.