Understand the "Decorator Pattern" with a real world example

Question

I was studying the Decorator Pattern as documented in GOF.

Please, help me understand the Decorator Pattern. Could someone give a use-case example of where this is useful in the real world?

Answer 1

Decorator pattern achieves a single objective of dynamically adding responsibilities to any object.

Consider a case of a pizza shop. In the pizza shop they will sell few pizza varieties and they will also provide toppings in the menu. Now imagine a situation wherein if the pizza shop has to provide prices for each combination of pizza and topping. Even if there are four basic pizzas and 8 different toppings, the application would go crazy maintaining all these concrete combination of pizzas and toppings.

Here comes the decorator pattern.

As per the decorator pattern, you will implement toppings as decorators and pizzas will be decorated by those toppings' decorators. Practically each customer would want toppings of his desire and final bill-amount will be composed of the base pizzas and additionally ordered toppings. Each topping decorator would know about the pizzas that it is decorating and it's price. GetPrice() method of Topping object would return cumulative price of both pizza and the topping.

EDIT

Here's a code-example of explanation above.

public abstract class BasePizza
{
    protected double myPrice;

    public virtual double GetPrice()
    {
        return this.myPrice;
    }
}

public abstract class ToppingsDecorator : BasePizza
{
    protected BasePizza pizza;
    public ToppingsDecorator(BasePizza pizzaToDecorate)
    {
        this.pizza = pizzaToDecorate;
    }

    public override double GetPrice()
    {
        return (this.pizza.GetPrice() + this.myPrice);
    }
}

class Program
{
    [STAThread]
    static void Main()
    {
        //Client-code
        Margherita pizza = new Margherita();
        Console.WriteLine("Plain Margherita: " + pizza.GetPrice().ToString());

        ExtraCheeseTopping moreCheese = new ExtraCheeseTopping(pizza);
        ExtraCheeseTopping someMoreCheese = new ExtraCheeseTopping(moreCheese);
        Console.WriteLine("Plain Margherita with double extra cheese: " + someMoreCheese.GetPrice().ToString());

        MushroomTopping moreMushroom = new MushroomTopping(someMoreCheese);
        Console.WriteLine("Plain Margherita with double extra cheese with mushroom: " + moreMushroom.GetPrice().ToString());

        JalapenoTopping moreJalapeno = new JalapenoTopping(moreMushroom);
        Console.WriteLine("Plain Margherita with double extra cheese with mushroom with Jalapeno: " + moreJalapeno.GetPrice().ToString());

        Console.ReadLine();
    }
}

public class Margherita : BasePizza
{
    public Margherita()
    {
        this.myPrice = 6.99;
    }
}

public class Gourmet : BasePizza
{
    public Gourmet()
    {
        this.myPrice = 7.49;
    }
}

public class ExtraCheeseTopping : ToppingsDecorator
{
    public ExtraCheeseTopping(BasePizza pizzaToDecorate)
        : base(pizzaToDecorate)
    {
        this.myPrice = 0.99;
    }
}

public class MushroomTopping : ToppingsDecorator
{
    public MushroomTopping(BasePizza pizzaToDecorate)
        : base(pizzaToDecorate)
    {
        this.myPrice = 1.49;
    }
}

public class JalapenoTopping : ToppingsDecorator
{
    public JalapenoTopping(BasePizza pizzaToDecorate)
        : base(pizzaToDecorate)
    {
        this.myPrice = 1.49;
    }
}

Answer 2

This is a simple example of adding new behavior to an existing object dynamically, or the Decorator pattern. Due to the nature of dynamic languages such as Javascript, this pattern becomes part of the language itself.

// Person object that we will be decorating with logging capability
var person = {
  name: "Foo",
  city: "Bar"
};

// Function that serves as a decorator and dynamically adds the log method to a given object
function MakeLoggable(object) {
  object.log = function(property) {
    console.log(this[property]);
  }
}

// Person is given the dynamic responsibility here
MakeLoggable(person);

// Using the newly added functionality
person.log('name');

Answer 3

It's worth noting that the Java i/o model is based on the decorator pattern. The layering of this reader on top of that reader on top of...is a really real world example of decorator.

Answer 4

Example - Scenario- Let's say you are writing an encryption module. This encryption can encrypt the clear file using DES - Data encryption standard. Similarly, in a system you can have the encryption as AES - Advance encryption standard. Also, you can have the combination of encryption - First DES, then AES. Or you can have first AES, then DES.

Discussion- How will you cater this situation? You cannot keep creating the object of such combinations - for example - AES and DES - total of 4 combinations. Thus, you need to have 4 individual objects This will become complex as the encryption type will increase.

Solution - Keep building up the stack - combinations depending on the need - at run time. Another advantage of this stack approach is that you can unwind it easily.

Here is the solution - in C++.

Firstly, you need a base class - a fundamental unit of the stack. You can think as the base of the stack. In this example, it is clear file. Let's follow always polymorphism. Make first an interface class of this fundamental unit. This way,you can implement it as you wish. Also, you don't need to have think of dependency while including this fundamental unit.

Here is the interface class -

class IclearData
{
public:

    virtual std::string getData() = 0;
    virtual ~IclearData() = 0;
};

IclearData::~IclearData()
{
    std::cout<<"Destructor called of IclearData"<<std::endl;
}

Now, implement this interface class -

class clearData:public IclearData
{
private:

    std::string m_data;

    clearData();

    void setData(std::string data)
        {
            m_data = data;
        }

public:

    std::string getData()
    {
        return m_data;
    }

    clearData(std::string data)
    {
        setData(data);
    }

    ~clearData()
    {
        std::cout<<"Destructor of clear Data Invoked"<<std::endl;
    }

};

Now, let's make a decorator abstract class - that can be extended to create any kind of flavours - here the flavour is the encryption type. This decorator abstract class is related to the base class. Thus, the decorator "is a" kind of interface class. Thus, you need to use inheritance.

class encryptionDecorator: public IclearData
{

protected:
    IclearData *p_mclearData;

    encryptionDecorator()
    {
      std::cout<<"Encryption Decorator Abstract class called"<<std::endl;
    }

public:

    std::string getData()
    {
        return p_mclearData->getData();
    }

    encryptionDecorator(IclearData *clearData)
    {
        p_mclearData = clearData;
    }

    virtual std::string showDecryptedData() = 0;

    virtual ~encryptionDecorator() = 0;

};

encryptionDecorator::~encryptionDecorator()
{
    std::cout<<"Encryption Decorator Destructor called"<<std::endl;
}

Now, let's make a concrete decorator class - Encryption type - AES -

const std::string aesEncrypt = "AES Encrypted ";

class aes: public encryptionDecorator
{

private:

    std::string m_aesData;

    aes();

public:

    aes(IclearData *pClearData): m_aesData(aesEncrypt)
    {
        p_mclearData = pClearData;
        m_aesData.append(p_mclearData->getData());
    }

    std::string getData()
        {
            return m_aesData;
        }

    std::string showDecryptedData(void)
    {
        m_aesData.erase(0,m_aesData.length());
        return m_aesData;
    }

};

Now, let's say the decorator type is DES -

const std::string desEncrypt = "DES Encrypted ";

class des: public encryptionDecorator
{

private:

    std::string m_desData;

    des();

public:

    des(IclearData *pClearData): m_desData(desEncrypt)
    {
        p_mclearData = pClearData;
        m_desData.append(p_mclearData->getData());
    }

    std::string getData(void)
        {
            return m_desData;
        }

    std::string showDecryptedData(void)
    {
        m_desData.erase(0,desEncrypt.length());
        return m_desData;
    }

};

Let's make a client code to use this decorator class -

int main()
{
    IclearData *pData = new clearData("HELLO_CLEAR_DATA");

    std::cout<<pData->getData()<<std::endl;


    encryptionDecorator *pAesData = new aes(pData);

    std::cout<<pAesData->getData()<<std::endl;

    encryptionDecorator *pDesData = new des(pAesData);

    std::cout<<pDesData->getData()<<std::endl;

    /** unwind the decorator stack ***/
    std::cout<<pDesData->showDecryptedData()<<std::endl;

    delete pDesData;
    delete pAesData;
    delete pData;

    return 0;
}

You will see the following results -

HELLO_CLEAR_DATA
Encryption Decorator Abstract class called
AES Encrypted HELLO_CLEAR_DATA
Encryption Decorator Abstract class called
DES Encrypted AES Encrypted HELLO_CLEAR_DATA
AES Encrypted HELLO_CLEAR_DATA
Encryption Decorator Destructor called
Destructor called of IclearData
Encryption Decorator Destructor called
Destructor called of IclearData
Destructor of clear Data Invoked
Destructor called of IclearData

Here is the UML diagram - Class representation of it. In case, you want to skip the code and focus on the design aspect.

Answer 5

Decorator pattern helps you to change or configure a functionality of your object by chaining with other similar subclasses of this object.

Best example would be InputStream and OutputStream classes in java.io package

    File file=new File("target","test.txt");
    FileOutputStream fos=new FileOutputStream(file);
    BufferedOutputStream bos=new BufferedOutputStream(fos);
    ObjectOutputStream oos=new ObjectOutputStream(bos);


    oos.write(5);
    oos.writeBoolean(true);
    oos.writeBytes("decorator pattern was here.");


//... then close the streams of course.

Answer 6

The decorator pattern lets you dynamically add behavior to objects.

Let's take an example where you need to build an app that calculates the price of different kinds of burgers. You need to handle different variations of burgers, such as "large" or "with cheese", each of which has a price relative to the basic burger. E.g. add $10 for burger with cheese, add extra $15 for large burger, etc.

In this case you might be tempted to create subclasses to handle these. We might express this in Ruby as:

class Burger
  def price
    50
  end
end

class BurgerWithCheese < Burger
  def price
    super + 15
  end
end

In the above example, the BurgerWithCheese class inherits from Burger, and overrides the price method to add $15 to the price defined in the super class. You would also create a LargeBurger class and define the price relative to Burger. But you also need to define a new class for the combination of "large" and "with cheese".

Now what happens if we need to serve "burger with fries"? We already have 4 classes to handle those combinations, and we will need to add 4 more to handle all combination of the 3 properties - "large", "with cheese" and "with fries". We need 8 classes now. Add another property and we'll need 16. This will grow as 2^n.

Instead, let's try defining a BurgerDecorator that takes in a Burger object:

class BurgerDecorator
  def initialize(burger)
    self.burger = burger
  end
end

class BurgerWithCheese < BurgerDecorator
  def price
    self.burger.price + 15
  end
end

burger = Burger.new
cheese_burger = BurgerWithCheese.new(burger)
cheese_burger.price   # => 65

In the above example, we've created a BurgerDecorator class, from which BurgerWithCheese class inherits. We can also represent the "large" variation by creating LargeBurger class. Now we could define a large burger with cheese at runtime as:

b = LargeBurger.new(cheese_burger)
b.price  # => 50 + 15 + 20 = 85

Remember how using inheritance to add the "with fries" variation would involve adding 4 more subclasses? With decorators, we would just create one new class, BurgerWithFries, to handle the new variation and handle this at runtime. Each new property would need just more decorator to cover all the permutations.

PS. This is the short version of an article I wrote about using the Decorator Pattern in Ruby, which you can read if you wish to find out more detailed examples.

Answer 7

What is Decorator Design Pattern in Java.

The formal definition of the Decorator pattern from the GoF book (Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, 1995, Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison Wesley) says you can,

"Attach additional responsibilities to an object dynamically. Decorators provide a flexible alternative to subclassing for extending functionality."

Let's say we have a Pizza and we want to decorate it with toppings such as Chicken Masala, Onion and Mozzarella Cheese. Let's see how to implement it in Java ...

Program to demonstrate how to implement Decorator Design Pattern in Java.

• See more at: http://www.hubberspot.com/2013/06/decorator-design-pattern-in-java.html#sthash.zKj0xLrR.dpuf

Pizza.java:

<!-- language-all: lang-html -->

package com.hubberspot.designpattern.structural.decorator;

public class Pizza {

public Pizza() {

}

public String description(){
    return "Pizza";
}

}



package com.hubberspot.designpattern.structural.decorator;

public abstract class PizzaToppings extends Pizza {

public abstract String description();

}

package com.hubberspot.designpattern.structural.decorator;

public class ChickenMasala extends PizzaToppings {

private Pizza pizza;

public ChickenMasala(Pizza pizza) {
    this.pizza = pizza;
}

@Override
public String description() {
    return pizza.description() + " with chicken masala, ";
}

}



package com.hubberspot.designpattern.structural.decorator;

public class MozzarellaCheese extends PizzaToppings {

private Pizza pizza;

public MozzarellaCheese(Pizza pizza) {
    this.pizza = pizza;
}

@Override
public String description() {
    return pizza.description() + "and mozzarella cheese.";
}
}



package com.hubberspot.designpattern.structural.decorator;

public class Onion extends PizzaToppings {

private Pizza pizza;

public Onion(Pizza pizza) {
    this.pizza = pizza;
}

@Override
public String description() {
    return pizza.description() + "onions, ";
}

}



package com.hubberspot.designpattern.structural.decorator;

public class TestDecorator {

public static void main(String[] args) {

    Pizza pizza = new Pizza();

    pizza = new ChickenMasala(pizza);
    pizza = new Onion(pizza);
    pizza = new MozzarellaCheese(pizza);

    System.out.println("You're getting " + pizza.description());

}

}

Answer 8

Decorator:

1. Add behaviour to object at run time. Inheritance is the key to achieve this functionality, which is both advantage and disadvantage of this pattern.
2. It enhances the behaviour of interface.
3. Decorator add responsibilities to objects without sub-classing

JDK example:

BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(new File("a.txt")));
while(bis.available()>0)
{
        char c = (char)bis.read();
        System.out.println("Char: "+c);;
}

Have a look at below SE question for UML diagram and code examples.

Use Cases and Examples of GoF Decorator Pattern for IO

Real word example of Decorator pattern: VendingMachineDecorator has been explained @

When to Use the Decorator Pattern?

Beverage beverage = new SugarDecorator(new LemonDecorator(new Tea("Assam Tea")));
beverage.decorateBeverage();

beverage = new SugarDecorator(new LemonDecorator(new Coffee("Cappuccino")));
beverage.decorateBeverage();

In above example, Tea or Coffee ( Beverage) has been decorated by Sugar and Lemon.

Answer 9

Some time back I had refactored a codebase into using Decorator pattern, so I will try to explain the use case.

Lets assume we have a set of services and based on whether the user has acquired licence of particular service, we need to start the service.

All the services have a common interface

interface Service {
  String serviceId();
  void init() throws Exception;
  void start() throws Exception;
  void stop() throws Exception;
}

Pre Refactoring

abstract class ServiceSupport implements Service {
  public ServiceSupport(String serviceId, LicenseManager licenseManager) {
    // assign instance variables
  }

  @Override
  public void init() throws Exception {
    if (!licenseManager.isLicenseValid(serviceId)) {
       throw new Exception("License not valid for service");
    }
    // Service initialization logic
  }
}

If you observe carefully, ServiceSupport is dependent on LicenseManager. But why should it be dependent on LicenseManager? What if we needed background service which doesn't need to check license information. In the current situation we will have to somehow train LicenseManager to return true for background services. This approach didn't seem well to me. According to me license check and other logic were orthogonal to each other.

So Decorator Pattern comes to the rescue and here starts refactoring with TDD.

Post Refactoring

class LicensedService implements Service {
  private Service service;
  public LicensedService(LicenseManager licenseManager, Service service) {
    this.service = service;
  }

  @Override
  public void init() {
    if (!licenseManager.isLicenseValid(service.serviceId())) {
      throw new Exception("License is invalid for service " + service.serviceId());
    }
    // Delegate init to decorated service
    service.init();
  }

  // override other methods according to requirement
}

// Not concerned with licensing any more :)
abstract class ServiceSupport implements Service {
  public ServiceSupport(String serviceId) {
    // assign variables
  }

  @Override
  public void init() {
    // Service initialization logic
  }
}

// The services which need license protection can be decorated with a Licensed service
Service aLicensedService = new LicensedService(new Service1("Service1"), licenseManager);
// Services which don't need license can be created without one and there is no need to pass license related information
Service aBackgroundService = new BackgroundService1("BG-1");

Takeaways

• Cohesion of code got better
• Unit testing became easier, as don't have to mock licensing when testing ServiceSupport
• Don't need to bypass licensing by any special checks for background services
• Proper division of responsibilities

Answer 10

Let's take example of PubG. Assault rifles works best with 4x zoom and while we are on it, we would also need compensator and suppressor. It will reduce recoil and reduce firing sound as well as echo. We will need to implement this feature where we will allow players to buy their favourite gun and their accessories. Players can buy the gun or some of the accessory or all of the accessory and they would be charged accordingly.

Let's see how decorator pattern is applied here:

Suppose someone wants to buy SCAR-L with all three accessories mentioned above.

1. Take an object of SCAR-L
2. Decorate (or add) the SCAR-L with 4x zoom object
3. Decorate the SCAR-L with suppressor object
4. Decorate the SCAR-L with compressor object
5. Call the cost method and let each object delegate to add on the cost using cost method of accessories

This will lead to a class diagram like this:

Now, we can have classes like this:

public abstract class Gun {     
    private Double cost;    
    public Double getCost() {           
        return cost;        
       }    
    }

public abstract class GunAccessories extends Gun {  }

public class Scarl extends Gun {    
    public Scarl() {            
        cost = 100;
        }   
     }

public class Suppressor extends GunAccessories {        
    Gun gun;        
    public Suppressor(Gun gun) {            
    cost = 5;           
    this.gun = gun;     
    }               
    public double getCost(){            
        return cost + gun.getCost();
    }
}

public class GunShop{   
    public static void main(String args[]){         
    Gun scarl = new Scarl();                
    scarl = new Supressor(scarl);
    System.out.println("Price is "+scarl.getCost());
    }      
}

We can similarly add other accessories too and decorate our Gun.

Reference:

https://nulpointerexception.com/2019/05/05/a-beginner-guide-to-decorator-pattern/

Answer 11

Decorators are just a compositional alternative to subclassing. The common example from the original book on this topic, that everyone mentions, is with a text processing application.

Lets say you write a paragraph. You highlight it yellow. You italicize one sentence. You bolden half of the italicized sentence, and half of the next sentence too. You increase the font size of one of the italicized & bold letters. You change the font style of half the highlighted portion, some of it running over into the italicized portion, some not...

So I'm going to ask you how you'd implement that functionality. You start out with a class for a simple, undecorated letter. What do you do next?

I'm going to assume you would not use subclassing. You would need such a complex, convoluted hierarchy of multiple inheritance to achieve all the combinations I described and more, that subclassing and multiple inheritance just would be absurd. And I think that needs no explanation.

What you'd probably suggest is just packing all these properties into your letter object. Properties to define the font style, the size, the highlighting, bold, italicized, the list goes on. Every kind of property you could add to a letter object, you've got a property in your letter class for it.

So what are the problems with this property based approach?

1. now your class is bloated, it takes up a giant amount of memory. It has all these unnecessary properties associated with it, most that it will never use. Most letters are just... letters. Not decorated.
2. The data of your letter class is being used in a way that is completely exposed, your class is just a glorified struct. You have a bunch of getters and setters for all these properties. Outside code accesses those setters and modifies the graphical appearance of your object. There's tight coupling between your object and the outside code.
3. Everything is packed into one place, it's not modular. It's just going to be a bloated, interconnected bundle of code. That's going to be true in the outside code that handles your letter object as well, too.

Fundamentally it's a question of object oriented design, proper encapsulation and separation of concerns.

Now, let's just take it for granted we wanted to use better OO design principles. We want to use encapsulation, we want to maintain loose coupling between the outside code and our letter class. We wanted to minimize our letter objects memory footprint. How...? We can't use subclassing...

So we use decorators, which are a compositional approach to object oriented design - it's sort of the opposite of a top-down, subclassing approach. You wrap these letter objects with more functionality at runtime, building on top of them.

So that's what the decorator pattern is - it's a compositional alternative to subclassing. In our example you add a decorator to the letter object that needs highlighting. You can combine any number of decorators in an arbitrary number of ways, and wrap them all around a given letter. The decorator interface is always transparent, so you still treat these letters the same from the outside.

Any time you need to augment functionality in a way that's arbitrary and recombinable, consider this approach. Multiple inheritance runs into all kinds of problems, it just isn't scalable.

Answer 12

There is a example on Wikipedia about decorating a window with scrollbar:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decorator_pattern

Here is another very 'real world' example of "Team member, team lead and manager", which illustrates that decorator pattern is irreplaceable with simple inheritance:

https://zishanbilal.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/design-patterns-by-examples-decorator-pattern/

Answer 13

Decorator pattern achieves a single objective of dynamically adding responsibilities to any object.

Java I/O Model is based on decorator pattern.

Answer 14

Decorator Design Pattern: This pattern helps to modify the characteristics of an object at runtime. It provides different flavours to an object and gives flexibility to choose what ingredients we want to use in that flavour.

Real Life Example: Lets say you have a main cabin seat in a flight. Now you are allowed to choose multiple amenities with the seat. Each amenity has its own cost associated with it. Now if a user chooses Wifi and premium food, he/she will be charged for seat + wifi + premium food.

In this case decorator design pattern can really help us. Visit the above link to understand more about decorator pattern and implementation of one real life example.