DEV Community

Cover image for Design Patterns for Web Development
May
May

Posted on

Design Patterns for Web Development

There are times where building a design structure for your project might seem daunting when you don't know how to start. Knowing design patterns can help us as developers to find out how to better build our software depending on how scalable we will want it or the kind of functionality we need.

Design patterns are typical solutions to common problems in software design. Rather than being a code solution, they are general concepts you can implement in your software to expect certain behavior from it. The book "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software", which has become a classic in software development, introduced 23 patterns to solve object-oriented design. Here I'm going to cover 3 design patterns which are some of the most used in front-end development.

But first, why learning design patterns is so important?

1.Recognize patterns in libraries and languages
Some libraries like Angular use design patterns in the way they are structured and the way they create solutions to problems. This gives us an idea of how we can use this current behavior to build our own solutions.

2.Avoid reinventing the wheel

It's easier to create solutions others have previously faced and succeeded in implementing them, than coming up with a solution from scratch.

3.Shared vocabulary

Within development teams, it's easier to talk about how to design your solutions if everyone in the team is familiarized with design patterns. It is easier to explain an abstract idea just by using its name rather than explaining the whole concept.

Types of Patterns

There are 3 types of design patterns depending on their behavior.

  • Creational patterns: Provide a structure to create objects easily, provide certain flexibility on its creation, and reuse existent code.

  • Structural patterns: Provide a structure that helps assemble objects and classes into larger structures.

  • Behavioral patterns: Assign responsibilities between objects and take care of communication.

Singleton

Singleton is a creational design pattern that restricts class to have only one instance, while also creating a global access point to this instance. It is used when control access to a shared resource is needed.

  • Use this pattern when you need to ensure control access to a resource that might return inconsistencies if it is changed by two different objects at the same time. (Ex. Databases, state of an object)
class Singleton {
    private static instance: Singleton;

    private constructor() { }

    public static getInstance(): Singleton {
        if (!Singleton.instance) {
            Singleton.instance = new Singleton();
        }

        return Singleton.instance;
    }
}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Observer

Observer is a behavioral design pattern in which objects get information about any events happening to the object they are observing. The observer pattern defines a subscriber method, which will update every object that is subscribed to itself, making sure every subscriber gets the latest update.

An example of an observer in our daily life would be subscribing to a newsletter. The moment you join the mailing list you are notified when there is a new publication.

  • Use this pattern when changes on one object may require updating other objects, and the actual set of objects is unknown or changes dynamically.
class Observable {

    // List of observers
    private observers: Observer[] = [];

    public attach(observer: Observer): void {
        const exists = this.observers.includes(observer);
        if (!exists) {
            this.observers.push(observer);
        }
    }

    public detach(observer: Observer): void {
        const observerIndex = this.observers.indexOf(observer);
        if (observerIndex !== -1) {
            this.observers.splice(observerIndex, 1);
        }
    }

    public notify(): void {
        for (const observer of this.observers) {
            observer.update(this);
        }
    }
}

class Observer {
    public update(observable: Observable): void {
        // Update observer according to Observable state
    }
}


Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Decorator

Decorator is a structural pattern that lets you add new characteristics to objects by adding a wrapper that contains the behaviors.

We can find examples of this pattern in food delivery apps where you can choose any toppings or extras to your food, then the application adds the corresponding cost to your order.

  • Use this pattern when it's necessary to add these extra behaviors on run time, or when inheritance is not possible.
interface Coffee {
    getCost(): int;
}

class SimpleCoffee implements Coffee {
    public getCost(): int {
        return 2;
    }
}

class CoffeeDecorator implements Coffee {
    protected decoratedCoffee: SimpleCoffee;

    constructor(decoratedCoffee: SimpleCoffee) {
        this.decoratedCoffee = decoratedComponent;
    }

    public getCost(): int {
        return this.component.getCost();
    }
}

class WithMilk extends CoffeeDecorator {
    public getCost(): int {
        return super.getCost + 0.5;
    }
}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Even though knowing these design patterns is useful to build better solutions, it is not always necessary to use them in every project we come across. We need to take some time to think about the pros and cons of implementing them on our own code. Remember to avoid overcomplicating your code if you will not get any benefit from using them in that particular case.

Have you used any other design patterns in your web development projects? Let me know which are the ones you use the most.

To learn more about design patterns check out:
Refractoring Guru - Design Patterns

Top comments (11)

Collapse
 
weasnerb profile image
Brian Weasner

If you want to use observers and need more than just a simple publish and subscribe, I highly recommend #rxjs. It's heavily used by #angular folks, but it can be used in vanilla js projects as well.

Collapse
 
geni94 profile image
geni94

Well if you want to build a "simple" web app, you simply don't use Angular lol.

Collapse
 
meyruiz profile image
May

Hi Brian, thanks for the recommendation! Will definitely give it a try

Collapse
 
kvstepanov profile image
Kirill Stepanov • Edited

Great article, thanks! Would be nice to extend the list with something like Facade, Factory, Adapter, for example. Maybe we could use the thread to post useful patterns?

UPD: I overlooked the link at the end of the article.

Collapse
 
aalphaindia profile image
Pawan Pawar

Thanks for the information!!

Collapse
 
yurieastwood profile image
Yuri Eastwood

Nice article! Cool introduction to some heavily used patterns.
Thanks for sharing!

Collapse
 
jmaicaaan profile image
JM Santos

Thanks for the great article! I wonder how we can apply these patterns without using some classes so I can apply it to some of my React code. :)

Collapse
 
avinash8847 profile image
Avinash

I have tried to implement pub-sub pattern in react in this article dev.to/avinash8847/publisher-subsc...

Collapse
 
nirbhayparmar profile image
Nirbhay Parmar

Can you explain about iterative design pattern?

Collapse
 
meyruiz profile image
May

Hi Nirbhay! The iterative pattern lets you traverse a collection of items without specifically exposing how this collection is structured. Imagine this collection being a tree that you could traverse either using a depth-first or breadth-first approach. The "getNext()" function iterator will work differently depending on the approach. This is not exposed, so the objects calling the iterator just care about getting the next element but they don't know which structure is used or how it is traversed.

I hope I can work on other design patterns next, but for now, you can check this resource: refactoring.guru/design-patterns/i...
And also I recommend Christopher Okhravi's explanations since they are very good and complete: youtube.com/watch?v=uNTNEfwYXhI

Collapse
 
nirbhayparmar profile image
Nirbhay Parmar

Thank you @may for this answer, very useful.