Design Patterns in the Test of Time: Bridge
The bridge pattern is a design pattern used in software engineering which is meant to "decouple an abstraction from its implementation so that the two can vary independently".The bridge uses encapsulation, aggregation, and can use inheritance to separate responsibilities into different classes.
Bridge is quite complex, mostly because it is composed of Abstraction, Refined Abstraction, Implementor and Concrete Implementor. Here is a concrete example (pun intended):
- Abstraction: CImage
- Refined Abstraction: CBmpImage, CJpegImage
- Implementor: CimageImp
- Concrete Implementor: CWinImp, COS2Imp
In general, I don’t like complex things, and of the top of my head, I can’t think of a time when I used this approach. Until such time when I can see a really good reason why I would want to do something like this, I see very little reason to bother.
Recommendation: Avoid, there are simpler options to solving those sort of problems.
(Note: Opinions expressed in this article and its replies are the opinions of their respective authors and not those of DZone, Inc.)
Comments
Lund Wolfe replied on Thu, 2012/11/22 - 5:59pm
I think we use this pattern a lot more than we realize, and we may never put the name Bridge in the name of a class. We need a single class from the client perspective that acts as two classes and two hierarchies that can change and be further subclassed, so the main client class delegates to an aggregate class hierarchy.
I think I'll keep it, and the concept, in my bag of tricks.
Lloyd Shove replied on Sun, 2012/11/25 - 7:32pm
I like this series of design pattern article.... but...
"there are simpler options to solving those sort of problems."
I think the article and the comments would be much more interesting if you offered up a simpler solution for this and other examples.
Keep them coming.