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Flyweight Pattern

The flyweight pattern is used to reduce the memory footprint of object-oriented programs by sharing as much data as possible with similar objects. It does this by storing extrinsic state externally rather than within the objects themselves. This allows efficient sharing of objects that contain the same intrinsic properties, such as drawing a forest with millions of trees that only differ in their positions. The flyweight pattern involves using a factory to control the creation of flyweights and ensure they are shared properly.

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GURTEJ SINGH
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101 views

Flyweight Pattern

The flyweight pattern is used to reduce the memory footprint of object-oriented programs by sharing as much data as possible with similar objects. It does this by storing extrinsic state externally rather than within the objects themselves. This allows efficient sharing of objects that contain the same intrinsic properties, such as drawing a forest with millions of trees that only differ in their positions. The flyweight pattern involves using a factory to control the creation of flyweights and ensure they are shared properly.

Uploaded by

GURTEJ SINGH
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Flyweight Pattern

Submitted by :

Gurtej Singh
MIT2018068
Design Patterns

“Each pattern describes a problem that occurs over and over again in our environment, and then
describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a
million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice”. — Christopher Alexander
Types of Design Patterns
1. Creational
These design patterns are all about class instantiation or
object creation. For ex : Factory Method, Abstract Factory

2. Structural
These are about organizing different classes and objects to
form larger structures and provide new functionality.
For ex : Facade, Flyweight, Private Class Data and Proxy.

3. Behavioral
These are about identifying common communication
patterns between objects and realize these patterns.
For ex : Chain of responsibility, Command, Interpreter, Iterator,
Mediator, Memento, Null Object, Observer, State, Strategy,
Template method, Visitor
Motivation
● You want to draw a forest of trees!
● How would you implement this?
● Millions of tree objects in the program?
○ Memory constraint
● What is the optimal solution?
● Can we implement it so that we create only 1 tree
object?
Flyweight Pattern
● That’s where flyweight comes in!
● If the objects you create have so much common
properties (like trees, only positions are different).
● The activity diagram may be like this with only one
instance.
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
● Then, we have to store positions somewhere!
○ Client can do this for us.
Definition

● Flyweight pattern is a pattern for sharing


objects, where each instance does not contain
its own state but stores it externally.

● This allows efficient sharing of objects to save


space when there are many instances but only
a few different types
Implementation

● We implement the creation of Attacker and Defender in the


game of Counter Strike.
● So we have 2 classes
○ Attacker
○ Defender
● Whenever a player asks for a weapon we assign him the asked
weapon. In the mission,attacker’s task is to plant a bomb while
the defenders have to diffuse the bomb.
Intrinsic State

● Here ‘player’ is an intrinsic state.

● We can have some other states like their color


or any other properties which are similar for all
the Attackers/Defenders in their respective
Attacker/Defender class.
Extrinsic State

● Attacker / Defender is an extrinsic property.

● Weapon is an extrinsic state since each player


can carry any weapon of his/her choice.

● Weapon need to be passed as a parameter by


the client itself.
Class Diagram
CODE
Consequences
● Run time costs
○ Client is responsible for extrinsic states
(storing, fetching etc)
○ Normally they are part of the object.
● Space saving
○ Will increase as more flyweights are shared.
How much you share, that much you save
space!
● Factory
○ Flyweight must be created only via factory!
Implementation Issues

● Extrinsic states can be stored but what about we


want to change the intrinsic state of a flyweight?
○ Modify the factory as to create new flyweights with
a different intrinsic state also.
○ Not so efficient, slowly breaking the flyweight
pattern.
● UnsharedConcreteFlyweight is normally a totally
different object but we can also make them sharable
via factory.
○ If they become sharable later, the oldly created
ones should be added to factory
REAL WORLD APPLICATION
References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyweight_pattern
2. GoF Design Patterns Book
3. Definition from: C# design patterns, James cooper
4. http://www.dofactory.com/Patterns/PatternFlyweight.
aspx#_self1
5. http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs32/f/2008/218/8/7/Pine_fo
rest_by_softwalls.jpg
6. Oreilly Head First: Design Patterns Book
7. Fry of Futurama for Questions Picture
8. Demo: http://www.javacamp.org/designPattern/flyweight.html
9. http://javatechniques.com/public/java/docs/basics/stri
ng-equality.html
Thank You !

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