DESIGN PATTERN
| Type : | St (Structural) |
| Intent : | Decouple an abstraction from its implementation so that the two can vary independently. |
| Applicability : | Use the Bridge pattern when : - you want to avoid a permanent binding between an abstraction and its implementation. This might be the case, for example, when the implementation must be selected or switched at run-time. - both the abstractions and their implementations should be extensible by subclassing. In this case, the Bridge pattern lets you combine the different abstractions and implementations and extend them independently. - changes in the implementation of an abstraction should have no impact on clients; that is, their code should not have to be recompiled. - (C++) you want to hide the implementation of an abstraction completely from clients. In C++ the representation of a class is visible in the class interface. - you have a proliferation of classes. Such a class hierarchy indicates the need for splitting an object into two parts. Rumbaugh uses the term "nested generalizations" to refer to such class hierarchies. - you want to share an implementation among multiple objects (perhaps using reference counting), and this fact should be hidden from the client. A simple example is Coplien's String class, in which multiple objects can share the same string representation (StringRep). |