design-patterns interview questions
Top design-patterns frequently asked interview questions
What real (i.e. practical) difference exists between a static class and a singleton pattern?
Both can be invoked without instantiation, both provide only one "Instance" and neither of them is thread-safe. Is there any other difference?
Source: (StackOverflow)
Is it possible to implement the Model-View-Controller pattern in Java for Android? Or is it already implemented through Activities? Or is there a better way to implement the MVC pattern for Android?
Source: (StackOverflow)
The glorified global variable - becomes a gloried global class. Some say breaking Object Oriented Design.
Give me scenarios, other than the good old logger where it makes sense to use the singleton.
Source: (StackOverflow)
I'm trying to get my head around how to properly use the repository pattern. The central concept of an Aggregate Root keeps coming up. When searching both the web and Stack Overflow for help with what an aggregate root is, I keep finding discussions about them and dead links to pages that are supposed to contain base definitions.
In the context of the repository pattern, what is an aggregate root?
Source: (StackOverflow)
A long time ago I have read an article (I believe a blog entry) which put me on the "right" track on naming objects: Be very very scrupulous about naming things in your program.
For example if my application was (as a typical business app) handling users, companies and addresses I'd have a User, a Company and an Address domain class - and probably somewhere a UserManager, a CompanyManager and an AddressManager would pop up that handles those things.
So can you tell what those UserManager, CompanyManager and AddressManager do? No, because Manager is a very very generic term that fits to anything you can do with your domain objects.
The article I read recommended using very specific names. If it was a C++ application and the UserManager's job was allocating and freeing users from the heap it would not manage the users but guard their birth and death. Hmm, maybe we could call this a UserShepherd.
Or maybe the UserManager's job is to examine each User object's data and sign the data cryptographically. Then we'd have a UserRecordsClerk.
Now that this idea stuck with me I try to apply it. And find this simple idea amazingly hard.
I can describe what the classes do and (as long as I don't slip into quick & dirty coding) the classes I write do exactly one thing. What I miss to go from that description to the names is a kind of catalogue of names, a vocabulary that maps the concepts to names.
Ultimately I'd like to have something like a pattern catalogue in my mind (frequently design patterns easily provide the object names, e.g. a factory)
So, how do you handle that issue? Do you have a fixed vocabulary, do you invent new names on the fly or do you consider naming things not-so-important or wrong?
P.S.: I'm also interested in links to articles and blogs discussing the issue. As a start, here is the original article that got me thinking about it: Naming Java Classes without a 'Manager'
Update: Summary of answers
Here's a little summary of what I learned from this question in the meantime.
- Try not to create new metaphors (Nanny)
- Have a look at what other frameworks do
Further articles/books on this topic:
And a current list of name prefixes/suffixes I collected (subjectively!) from the answers:
- Coordinator
- Builder
- Writer
- Reader
- Handler
- Container
- Protocol
- Target
- Converter
- Controller
- View
- Factory
- Entity
- Bucket
And a good tip for the road:
Don't get naming paralysis. Yes, names are very important but they're not important enough to waste huge amounts of time on. If you can't think up a good name in 10 minutes, move on.
Source: (StackOverflow)
Fragments seem to be very nice for separation of UI logic into some modules. But along with ViewPager its lifecycle is still misty to me. So Guru thoughts are badly needed!
Edit
See dumb solution below ;-)
Scope
Main activity has a ViewPager with fragments. Those fragments could implement a little bit different logic for other (submain) activities, so the fragments' data is filled via a callback interface inside the activity. And everything works fine on first launch, but!...
Problem
When the activity gets recreated (e.g. on orientation change) so do the ViewPager's fragments. The code (you'll find below) says that every time the activity is created I try to create a new ViewPager fragments adapter the same as fragments (maybe this is the problem) but FragmentManager already has all these fragments stored somewhere (where?) and starts the recreation mechanism for those. So the recreation mechanism calls the "old" fragment's onAttach, onCreateView, etc. with my callback interface call for initiating data via the Activity's implemented method. But this method points to the newly created fragment which is created via the Activity's onCreate method.
Issue
Maybe I'm using wrong patterns but even Android 3 Pro book doesn't have much about it. So, please, give me one-two punch and point out how to do it the right way. Many thanks!
Code
Main Activity
public class DashboardActivity extends BasePagerActivity implements OnMessageListActionListener {
private MessagesFragment mMessagesFragment;
@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
Logger.d("Dash onCreate");
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.viewpager_container);
new DefaultToolbar(this);
// create fragments to use
mMessagesFragment = new MessagesFragment();
mStreamsFragment = new StreamsFragment();
// set titles and fragments for view pager
Map<String, Fragment> screens = new LinkedHashMap<String, Fragment>();
screens.put(getApplicationContext().getString(R.string.dashboard_title_dumb), new DumbFragment());
screens.put(getApplicationContext().getString(R.string.dashboard_title_messages), mMessagesFragment);
// instantiate view pager via adapter
mPager = (ViewPager) findViewById(R.id.viewpager_pager);
mPagerAdapter = new BasePagerAdapter(screens, getSupportFragmentManager());
mPager.setAdapter(mPagerAdapter);
// set title indicator
TitlePageIndicator indicator = (TitlePageIndicator) findViewById(R.id.viewpager_titles);
indicator.setViewPager(mPager, 1);
}
/* set of fragments callback interface implementations */
@Override
public void onMessageInitialisation() {
Logger.d("Dash onMessageInitialisation");
if (mMessagesFragment != null)
mMessagesFragment.loadLastMessages();
}
@Override
public void onMessageSelected(Message selectedMessage) {
Intent intent = new Intent(this, StreamActivity.class);
intent.putExtra(Message.class.getName(), selectedMessage);
startActivity(intent);
}
BasePagerActivity aka helper
public class BasePagerActivity extends FragmentActivity {
BasePagerAdapter mPagerAdapter;
ViewPager mPager;
}
Adapter
public class BasePagerAdapter extends FragmentPagerAdapter implements TitleProvider {
private Map<String, Fragment> mScreens;
public BasePagerAdapter(Map<String, Fragment> screenMap, FragmentManager fm) {
super(fm);
this.mScreens = screenMap;
}
@Override
public Fragment getItem(int position) {
return mScreens.values().toArray(new Fragment[mScreens.size()])[position];
}
@Override
public int getCount() {
return mScreens.size();
}
@Override
public String getTitle(int position) {
return mScreens.keySet().toArray(new String[mScreens.size()])[position];
}
// hack. we don't want to destroy our fragments and re-initiate them after
@Override
public void destroyItem(View container, int position, Object object) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
}
}
Fragment
public class MessagesFragment extends ListFragment {
private boolean mIsLastMessages;
private List<Message> mMessagesList;
private MessageArrayAdapter mAdapter;
private LoadMessagesTask mLoadMessagesTask;
private OnMessageListActionListener mListener;
// define callback interface
public interface OnMessageListActionListener {
public void onMessageInitialisation();
public void onMessageSelected(Message selectedMessage);
}
@Override
public void onAttach(Activity activity) {
super.onAttach(activity);
// setting callback
mListener = (OnMessageListActionListener) activity;
mIsLastMessages = activity instanceof DashboardActivity;
}
@Override
public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container, Bundle savedInstanceState) {
inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_listview, container);
mProgressView = inflater.inflate(R.layout.listrow_progress, null);
mEmptyView = inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_nodata, null);
return super.onCreateView(inflater, container, savedInstanceState);
}
@Override
public void onActivityCreated(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onActivityCreated(savedInstanceState);
// instantiate loading task
mLoadMessagesTask = new LoadMessagesTask();
// instantiate list of messages
mMessagesList = new ArrayList<Message>();
mAdapter = new MessageArrayAdapter(getActivity(), mMessagesList);
setListAdapter(mAdapter);
}
@Override
public void onResume() {
mListener.onMessageInitialisation();
super.onResume();
}
public void onListItemClick(ListView l, View v, int position, long id) {
Message selectedMessage = (Message) getListAdapter().getItem(position);
mListener.onMessageSelected(selectedMessage);
super.onListItemClick(l, v, position, id);
}
/* public methods to load messages from host acitivity, etc... */
}
Solution
The dumb solution is to save the fragments inside onSaveInstanceState (of host Activity) with putFragment and get them inside onCreate via getFragment. But I still have a strange feeling that things shouldn't work like that... See code below:
@Override
protected void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState) {
super.onSaveInstanceState(outState);
getSupportFragmentManager()
.putFragment(outState, MessagesFragment.class.getName(), mMessagesFragment);
}
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
Logger.d("Dash onCreate");
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
...
// create fragments to use
if (savedInstanceState != null) {
mMessagesFragment = (MessagesFragment) getSupportFragmentManager().getFragment(
savedInstanceState, MessagesFragment.class.getName());
StreamsFragment.class.getName());
}
if (mMessagesFragment == null)
mMessagesFragment = new MessagesFragment();
...
}
Source: (StackOverflow)
I was looking at the Proxy Pattern, and to me it seems an awful lot like the Decorator, Adapter, and Bridge patterns. Am I misunderstanding something? What's the difference? Why would I use the Proxy pattern versus the others? How have you used them in the past in real world projects?
Source: (StackOverflow)
What are some common, real world examples of using the Builder Pattern? What does it buy you? Why not just use a Factory Pattern?
Source: (StackOverflow)
There have been several questions already posted with specific questions about dependency injection, such as when to use it and what frameworks are there for it. However,
What is dependency injection and when/why should or shouldn't it be used?
Source: (StackOverflow)
The singleton pattern is a fully paid up member of the GoF's patterns book, but it lately seems rather orphaned by the developer world. I still use quite a lot of singletons, especially for factory classes, and while you have to be a bit careful about multithreading issues (like any class actually), I fail to see why they are so awful.
Stack Overflow especially seems to assume that everyone agrees that Singletons are evil. Why?
Source: (StackOverflow)
What is the difference between the Builder design pattern and the Factory design pattern?
Which one is more advantageous and why ?
How do I represent my findings as a graph if I want to test and compare/contrast these patterns ?
Source: (StackOverflow)
Since I started learning F# and OCaml last year, I've read a huge number of articles which insist that design patterns (especially in Java) are workarounds for the missing features in imperative languages. One article I found makes a fairly strong claim:
Most people I've met have read the
Design Patterns book by the Gang of
Four. Any self respecting programmer
will tell you that the book is
language agnostic and the patterns
apply to software engineering in
general, regardless of which language
you use. This is a noble claim.
Unfortunately it is far removed from
the truth.
Functional languages are extremely
expressive. In a functional language
one does not need design patterns
because the language is likely so high
level, you end up programming in
concepts that eliminate design
patterns all together.
The main features of functional programming include functions as first-class values, currying, immutable values, etc. It doesn't seem obvious to me that OO design patterns are approximating any of those features.
Additionally, in functional languages which support OOP (such as F# and OCaml), it seems obvious to me that programmers using these languages would use the same design patterns found available to every other OOP language. In fact, right now I use F# and OCaml everyday, and there are no striking differences between the patterns I use in these languages vs the patterns I use when I write in Java.
Is there any truth to the claim that functional programming eliminates the need for OOP design patterns? If so, could you post or link to an example of a typical OOP design pattern and its functional equivalent?
Source: (StackOverflow)
Recently I've bumped into a realization/implementation of the Singleton design pattern for C++. It has looked like this (I have adopted it from the real life example):
// a lot of methods are omitted here
class Singleton
{
public:
static Singleton* getInstance( );
~Singleton( );
private:
Singleton( );
static Singleton* instance;
};
From this declaration I can deduce that the instance field is initiated on the heap. That means there is a memory allocation. What is completely unclear for me is when exactly the memory is going to be deallocated? Or is there a bug and memory leak? It seems like there is a problem in the implementation.
My main question is, how do I implement it in the right way?
Source: (StackOverflow)