Tag Archive for 'selecting PHP design pattern'

Sandlight CMS III: PHP Abstract Factory

abfacNote: This is the third in a series for developing a CMS for Sandlight Productions. Drop by the Sandlight site to see the progress so far, and be sure to check your country’s flag count!

Now that the CMS has a filter for different devices, it now needs a pattern to take care of those devices and different types of content that they will display. Previous posts on this blog used the Bridge pattern and the Factory Method pattern. However, another pattern might be more useful for all of the different things that a Content Management System (CMS) might do. A review of the series of posts on this blog for how to select a design pattern, shows the different criteria to consider. The CMS has to create different elements of a Web page for different devices and that fact must be the focal point of the consideration. The section head for Creational Patterns in Learning PHP Design Patterns, lists the Abstract Factory pattern as a creational one, but that pattern was not discussed in the book nor on this blog. It would appear to be just what this CMS needs.

The Abstract Factory Design Pattern

The Abstract Factory pattern has features for families of factories and products instead of individual factories as does the Factory Method pattern. In comparing the relatively simple Factory Method pattern with the Abstract Factory, the Abstract Factory has multiple abstract product interfaces with multiple concrete factories for the families of the products.

Figure 1 shows the the Abstract Factory class diagram, and when you look at it, try to focus on the fact that the pattern has two types of interfaces: Factory and Product. So, if you understand the Factory Method pattern, you have a starting point for appreciating the Abstract Factory:

Figure 1: Abstract Factory class diagram

Figure 1: Abstract Factory class diagram

Unlike the Factory Method pattern, the Abstract Factory includes a Client class as an integral part of the pattern. Further, the Client holds an association between both the AbstractFactory (AbsFactory) and the two AbstractProduct classes. So while it shares some of the basic Factory Method characteristics, it is clearly a different pattern than the Factory Method.

Since the Abstract Factory may appear to be daunting, the color-coded the product instantiations (dashed lines) in the file diagram (appearing in the Play window) help show where each concrete factory method calls. Experiment with different combinations of factories (devices) and products (page parts) and look at the diagram so that you can see the path. Phone instantiations are in green, Tablet in red, and Desktop in blue. Experiment with the different single products first, and then click the bottom button to see what different “pages” each device factory displays.

Implementing the Abstract Factory in PHP

To see how this implementation of the Abstract Factory design pattern works, click the Play button. You will see both the interactive Abstract Pattern tester and the of the file diagram of this implementation of the Abstract Factory for the evolving Sandlight CMS. Click the Download button to see all of the files in the diagram. For this particular post, downloading all of the files is more important than usual because there are lots of them, and rather than having listings for all in this write-up, I’ve just selected representative ones.
PlayDownload

In addition to the Abstract Factory file diagram (viewed when you click the Play button), the following quick overview of the participants’ roles and how the CMS implements the Abstract Factory explain how this implementation works:

Client client: Only uses interfaces declared by IAbFactory (interface) and IProducts (abstract classes IHeaderProduct, IImageProduct and ITextProduct.) This means that the Client can only use the classes and methods implemented from those two interface types—factory or products. In other words, it should not directly implement a product (a page element) by directly using a product independent of the factory and product interfaces. Figure 2 illustrates this point:

Figure 2: Client works through Abstract Factory implementations

Figure 2: Client works through Abstract Factory implementations

In going over the other participants below, keep in mind that the Client can only implement concrete implementations of the IAbFactory to request products (page parts for different devices.)

IAbFactory interface: Establishes the methods for the concrete factories.

  • PhoneFactory implements operations to create phone products
  • TabletFactory implements operations to create tablet products
  • DesktopFactory implements operations to create desktop products

IHeaderProduct: abstract class Establishes the method for concrete header products and adds protected property for returning completed product.

  • PhoneHeader defines phone object to be created by the PhoneFactory and
    implements the IHeaderProduct interface
  • TabletHeader defines tablet object to be created by the Tabletactory and
    implements the IHeaderProduct interface
  • DesktopHeader defines desktop object to be created by the DesktopFactory and
    implements the IHeaderProduct interface

IImageProduct: abstract class Establishes the method for concrete image and/or video products and adds protected property for returning completed product.

  • PhoneImage defines phone object to be created by the PhoneFactory and
    implements the IImageProduct interface
  • TabletImage defines tablet object to be created by the Tabletactory and
    implements the IImageProduct interface
  • DesktopImage defines desktop object to be created by the DesktopFactory and
    implements the IImageProduct interface

ITextProduct: abstract class Establishes the method for concrete text products and adds protected property for returning completed product.

  • PhoneText defines phone object to be created by the PhoneFactory and
    implements the ITextProduct interface
  • TabletText defines tablet object to be created by the Tabletactory and
    implements the ITextProduct interface
  • DesktopText defines desktop object to be created by the DesktopFactory and
    implements the ITextProduct interface

Comparing the above outline with the Abstract Factory file diagram (seen when you click the Play button) shows that the Abstract Factory is bound to the idea of a factory implementing a product. The specific classes (products) requested are never directly referenced by the Client; rather it is through a factory. The CMS application requires factories for the different device categories; Phone, Tablet and Desktop. Each factory should be able to build the necessary parts (products) for each device. In this case (and for this example) the products are a Header, Graphic and Text. Each factory can build its own version of the products; so requesting a header, for example, is through a concrete factory, and depending on which concrete factory the clients requests, it builds the appropriate product.
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Choosing a PHP Design Pattern: Part III —Intentions & Encapsulating Variation

PickDP3I was very sorry when I found out that your intentions were good and not what I supposed they were.Sitting Bull after the Battle of Little Big Horn

Easing into a Selection

We have a bumper crop of peaches this year, and I’ve been peeling, slicing and freezing peaches for the last couple of weeks. It reminded me that Part III of Choosing a PHP Design Pattern is due. This is the third and last installment in the series. You might want to take a look at Part I and/or Part II of this series before or after looking at this post.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could type in the name of your intended project and up pops the best possible design pattern for that project? Even if you hold your breath until you turn blue, that’s not going to happen. However, such a project (a DP Picker) is a worthy one. You can begin to narrow down your choices by asking whether your project is one that belongs in the Creational, Structural or Behavioral categories. If you’re lucky, you’ll end up with the Creational category and only have five patterns from which to choose. (Since the Singleton is one of that group, you really only have to choose from four.) The following is a summary of each category. (The major sections of Learning PHP Design Patterns begin with a brief overview of each category. See pages 77, 121 and 167.)

  • Choose Creational When…You want to abstract the instantiation process and separate the use of the object from its creation.
  • Choose Structural When…You want to create larger structures from classes and objects.
  • Choose Behavioral When…You must focus of the communication between objects and the interaction between those objects.

Suppose I want to make an app that spends a lot of time loading and unloading different types of data and/or objects—which is something I often do. I’d probably want to choose a Creational pattern because I’m instantiating and removing lots of objects. Never mind which one; that’ll come later, but I’ve certainly narrowed my choices. On the other hand, if my main focus is going to be a game program, I’m going to need a good deal of inter-object communication and interaction and so I’m going to be looking at the Behavioral patterns. That will leave me with about half of the 24 patterns, but it’s a start.

Attention to Intention

The 24 different patterns have 24 different intentions (The Adapter pattern is counted twice since it has both Class and Object versions). The Gang of Four advise us to study the intention of each pattern to help make a decision about which one to use. Rather than listing them here, you can use the table developed in an earlier post, Design Pattern Variation and Intents Table, where you can also download the code for the table. Click the Play button to see the table:
Play

So what is an intention? Let’s take a look at the Proxy intention to get an idea:

Proxy Intention: Provide a surrogate or placeholder for another object to control access to it.

That kind of intention is pretty easy to envision. A login is one example where the user is logging into the Proxy and not the Real object. This was shown in Chapter 11 of Learning PHP Design Patterns and in a post on the Proxy pattern on this blog. (Click below to continue.)
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Choosing a PHP Design Pattern: Part II—Avoiding Redesign

PickDP2What are the causes of System Redesign?

To get started on Part 2 of choosing a design pattern, we need to look at the causes of redesign. I realize that his is jumping ahead in the list, but because the issue of re-design is at the heart of design patterns, it’s a good place for the second discussion of choosing a design pattern. The Gang of Four point out eight causes, and these causes each have design patterns that will help you avoid this redesign (see pp. 23-25 in GoF.) In this session, we’ll review the eight causes and the suggested patterns that can be used to avoid redesign. Look for the cause of redesign that best fits your system or general type of app.

Creating an object by Specifying a Class Explicitly

In one sense, this cause for redesign can be handled by the what you might do in making a movie deal–

Talk to my agent…

You don’t want to deal with the lawyers, contracts and all the negotiations required to make a movie deal. You just want to read the script, rehearse and get your lines straight. You let Murray (your agent) do all of that for you so you don’t get all tangled up with details you don’t know about or want to know about. Right away, you may be thinking,

That sounds like a Factory…

That’s right! You let the factory deal with the class your client wants to make a request from. A Proxy or Prototype would be another choice for separating request from the class you’re making the request to.

Dependence on specific Operations

Another cause for re-design is a dependence on specific operations which may change. The reason for changing an operation or a set of operations can be anything from a bright idea you get for a better way to set up the operations to changes in the objects the used by the operations. It could also be due to a new operation you want to add to the system. Suppose your system has an operation that handles the request for a phone number. The number could be anything from a land-line phone to a Skype number or something in the future none of us have even though of. You don’t want change in or the addition of a single operation to cause re-design for the whole site. So avoid hard-coded requests and let the decisions be made at compile time or run time. Two examples that avoid tightly bound requests are the Chain of Responsibility and Command patterns.

Dependence on Hardware and Software platforms

If you’re programming on a fairly low level, hardware differences can be more pronounced because you can program directly to the processor. PHP is a server-side language sent to a browser and it doesn’t matter is the user’s system is Linux, Windows and Mac operating systems. So platform is not something we tend to worry about or even have to concern ourselves with—albeit a few exceptions.

Having written design patterns for PHP5+, ActionScript 3.0 and a little Java, I am able to preserve most structures in a cross-language environment. However, I do need to attend to language differences, such as the fact that PHP5+ is weakly typed and ActionScript 3.0 is strongly typed. Gamma and associates suggest the Abstract Factory and Bridge designs to help overcome any software dependencies that may arise. The high level abstraction in both patterns helps to ameliorate any differences in hardware and software. However, most design patterns encourage communication between interfaces rather than concrete implementations, and so I would suggest that most (if not all) design patterns have a healthy regard for cross-platform and cross-API cases.

Dependence on Object Representations or Implementations

<em><strong>Figure 1:</strong>Works like Bait & Switch—as long as the interface is the same, it can make the request</em>

Figure 1: Works like Bait & Switch—as long as the interface is the same, it can make the request

We assume when we build a client class that it will simply make requests. However, to make those requests it has to know how an object is represented, stored, located, and implemented. Rather than having that responsibility thrust upon the client, GoF suggest hiding that information from the client. Then if changes are made, the client can make the same request and the information will be handled through abstract structures where change will not ripple through to the client nor the program. Figure 1 suggests that the Client doesn’t know what it’s getting itself into, and in this case, that’s a good thing! The Abstract Factory and Bridge designs along with Memento and Proxy designs keep request processing information hidden from the client, and so when changes are made, the client can make the same requests but get different implementations representing any changes to the system.
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Choosing a PHP Design Pattern: Part I—Selection Criteria

PickDP Which Design Pattern?

One of the most persistent questions that I get is, How do you select a Design Pattern?, and usually, my response is, Decide what varies and see which pattern handles that variation. Of course, you will find that lots of things vary, and deciding which one to build a design pattern around can be tricky. Furthermore, GoF have lots more to say about how to go about choosing a design pattern than just encapsulating variation. This series will cover the different criteria so that we can get a complete picture of the selection process.

Gamma, Helm, Johnson and Vlissides (aka Gang of Four) provide six criteria for making a selection (pp.28-30). They include:

  • Consider how design patterns solve design problems
  • Scan Intent sections
  • Study how patterns interrelate
  • Study patterns of like purpose
  • Examine a cause of redesign
  • Consider what should be variable in your design

Many of the selection solutions that GoF offer are simply references to a part of their book that discusses what design patterns do (which you may not have yet read), and so I’m going to try and summarize each of these criteria. That may result in an oversimplification, and you’re welcome to point out any such misstep I make and set me straight if you believe that a summarized explanation is too terse. (Better yet, go over pp. 11-31 and read all of the detail yourself.)

Consider how design patterns solve design problems

Section 1.6 (pp. 11-28) of Design Patterns is laden with major concepts and information about design pattern use as a strategy for solving design problems in programming. The foundation in finding an appropriate object is the idea that,

objects package both data and procedures that operate on data, and the only way that an object performs an operation is when it receives a request from a client.

Implied in that idea is that an objects’s internal states are encapsulated. You know what that is, and so we can move on to the central OOP issue of decomposing a system into objects. How do you do that? It’s not easy because you have so many factors to consider (some of which may be conflicting) in the decomposition process.

Figure 1: Breaking down complexity into simple parts

Figure 1: Breaking down complexity into simple parts

So what is the decomposition process? Basically, it’s breaking down a complex problem down into smaller, more manageable units—in the case of PHP design patterns, classes, (objects). At the root of all English literature is the alphabet. (See Figure 1) The degree to which you decompose a task refers to its granularity. Breaking down the works of Shakespeare can have different levels of granularity. For example all of Shakespeare’s works can be broken down into plays, plays into acts, acts into scenes, scenes into paragraphs, paragraphs into sentences, sentences into words, and finally words into letters of the alphabet. The degree of granularity depends on what you need. Understanding the alphabet will not help you understand much about Shakespeare, but if you don’t know the alphabet, you cannot read his plays, sonnets and poems. (See Object Granularity below).

Beginning with the problem (e.g., How to make a sniffer, how to create a UI for an online store, how securely store and retrieve data), you have to decide the way in which you want to break it down. (It’s not going to break itself down!) The only thing that has ever worked for me is knowing exactly what I want to do. In other words, you need some serious understanding of the problem itself. So even before you begin to work through the decomposition process, you need to study the project you want to complete. The OOP process for decomposition has different approaches:

  • Write a problem statement and create classes and operations from nouns and verbs in the statement.
  • Focus on the collaborations and responsibilities in the system (problem you’re trying to solve).
  • Model the real world and translate the objects found during analysis into design.

At one time or another, I’ve used all of these approaches, and they all work. Usually, I find myself going between them, combining them—shaking the box with the problem inside to see how things settle at the bottom. However, it’s difficult to provide a generic case, and so I’ll provide two cases that I actually worked through.
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