The observer pattern

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next

There
are actually two “things that change” in the observer pattern: the
quantity of observing objects and the way an update occurs. That is, the
observer pattern allows you to modify both of these without affecting the
surrounding code.

//: BoxObserver.java
// Demonstration of Observer pattern using
// Java's built-in observer classes.
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.util.*;
 
// You must inherit a new type of Observable:
class BoxObservable extends Observable {
  public void notifyObservers(Object b) {
    // Otherwise it won't propagate changes:
    setChanged();
    super.notifyObservers(b);
  }
}
 
public class BoxObserver extends Frame {
  Observable notifier = new BoxObservable();
  public BoxObserver(int grid) {
    setTitle("Demonstrates Observer pattern");
    setLayout(new GridLayout(grid, grid));
    for(int x = 0; x < grid; x++)
      for(int y = 0; y < grid; y++)
        add(new OCBox(x, y, notifier));
  }
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    int grid = 8;
    if(args.length > 0)
      grid = Integer.parseInt(args[0]);
    Frame f = new BoxObserver(grid);
    f.setSize(500, 400);
    f.setVisible(true);
    f.addWindowListener(
      new WindowAdapter() {
        public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e) {
          System.exit(0);
        }
      });
  }
}
 
class OCBox extends Canvas implements Observer {
  Observable notifier;
  int x, y; // Locations in grid
  Color cColor = newColor();
  static final Color[] colors = {
    Color.black, Color.blue, Color.cyan,
    Color.darkGray, Color.gray, Color.green,
    Color.lightGray, Color.magenta,
    Color.orange, Color.pink, Color.red,
    Color.white, Color.yellow
  };
  static final Color newColor() {
    return colors[
      (int)(Math.random() * colors.length)
    ];
  }
  OCBox(int x, int y, Observable notifier) {
    this.x = x;
    this.y = y;
    notifier.addObserver(this);
    this.notifier = notifier;
    addMouseListener(new ML());
  }
  public void paint(Graphics  g) {
    g.setColor(cColor);
    Dimension s = getSize();
    g.fillRect(0, 0, s.width, s.height);
  }
  class ML extends MouseAdapter {
    public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e) {
      notifier.notifyObservers(OCBox.this);
    }
  }
  public void update(Observable o, Object arg) {
    OCBox clicked = (OCBox)arg;
    if(nextTo(clicked)) {
      cColor = clicked.cColor;
      repaint();
    }
  }
  private final boolean nextTo(OCBox b) {
    return Math.abs(x - b.x) <= 1 &&
           Math.abs(y - b.y) <= 1;
  }
} ///:~ 

When
you first look at the online documentation for
Observable,
it’s a bit confusing because it appears that you can use an ordinary
Observable
object to manage the updates. But this doesn’t work; try it – inside
BoxObserver,
create an
Observable
object instead of a
BoxObservable
object and see what happens: nothing. To get an effect, you
must
inherit from
Observable
and somewhere in your derived-class code call setChanged( ).
This is the method that sets the “changed” flag, which means that
when you call
notifyObservers( )
all of the observers will, in fact, get notified. In the example above
setChanged( )
is simply called within
notifyObservers( ),
but you could use any criterion you want to decide when to call
setChanged( ).

BoxObserver
contains a single
Observable
object
called
notifier,
and every time an
OCBox
object is created, it is tied to
notifier.
In
OCBox,
whenever you click the mouse the
notifyObservers( )
method is called, passing the clicked object in as an argument so that all the
boxes receiving the message (in their
update( )
method)
know who was clicked and can decide whether to change themselves or not. Using
a combination of code in
notifyObservers( )
and
update( )
you can work out some fairly complex schemes.

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