Adapter Pattern

-  The adapter acts as the middleman by receiving requests from the client and converting them into requests that make sense on the vendor classes

­-  The adapter implements the target interface and holds an instance of the adaptee

-  The actual interface that the client needs is the target interface

-  We wrap the target interface with an adaptee interface, which does the work of the target interface

-  The client makes the request on the adapter, and the adapter delegates it to the adaptee interface

-  The client doesn't know that the actual work was done by the adaptee

-  Client and the adaptee are decoupled – neither knows about the other

-  Here's how the client uses the adapter

o        The client makes a request to the adapter by calling a method on it using the target interface

o        The adapter translates that request into one or more calls on the adaptee using the adaptee interface

o        The client receives the results of the call and never knows there is an adapter doing the translation

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­-  The Adapter Pattern converts the interface of a class into another interface the clients expect

­-  Adapter lets classes work together that couldn't otherwise because of incompatible interfaces

­-  This decouples the client from the implemented interface,

­-  If the interface changes over time, the adapter encapsulates the change so that the client doesn't have to be modified each time it needs to operate against a different interface

­-  It is not necessary that the adapter should wrap only one adaptee – it can hold two or more adaptees that are need to implement the target interface

 

­- There are two types of adapters

o        object adapters – uses composition - the adapter is composed of adaptee

§         it can not only adapt an adaptee class, but any of its subclasses

o        class adapters – uses multiple inheritance - the adapter subclasses both the target and the adaptee

§         it is committed to one specific adaptee class, but it doesn't have to reimplement the entire adaptee

§         it can also override the behavior of the adaptee, since its just subclassing

§         this cannot be used in Java since it involves multiple inheritance

 

­- Although Decorator and Adapter patterns looks similar, they are totally different in intent

o        Decorator wraps an object and adds new behavior

o        Adapter wraps an object and converts it into an interface the client expects

 

­- Following is an example of Adapter pattern. This example adapts an Enumerator to act as an Iterator

	public class EnumerationAdapter implements Iterator {

		Enumeration enumeration;

		public EnumerationAdapter(Enumeration enumeration) {

			this.enumeration = enumeration;

		}

		public boolean hasNext() {

			enumeration.hasMoreElements();

		}

		public Object next() {

			enumeration.nextElement();

		}

		public void remove() {

			throw new UnsupportedOperationException();

		}

	}