Decorator Pattern: Unleashing the Power of Design Patterns

Earlier in this series, we explored the facade and adapter design patterns in this series. Using Facade we can simplify large systems and by implementing adapters we can stay safe when using external APIs and classes. Now we will introduce the decorator design pattern, which also falls under the category of structural patterns.

When we just want to give some extra responsibilities to the base class, we can use the decorator pattern. This design pattern is a great alternative to subclassing functionality, extending functionality and having some added advantages.

question

If you are confused and think that we can also achieve the same functionality by subclassing functionality, then let me show you some code examples that will clear your confusion and make you love the decorator pattern.

I will give an example of a class responsible for generating email content. In the next code block, as you can see, this class generates the email content just fine without any modifications.

class eMailBody {
    private $header = 'This is email header';
	private $footer = 'This is email Footer';
	public $body = '';

	public function loadBody() {
		$this->body .= "This is Main Email body.<br />";
	}
}

We know Christmas is coming, so let’s say I want to greet my readers in my next newsletter email. So I have to add a message in the body of the email with an image that looks good.

To do this, I could edit directly in my email class, but I really don't want to do that. So I can implement inheritance to achieve the same effect. I create a separate subclass of the main email body class:

class christmasEmail extends eMailBody {
    public function loadBody() {
		parent::loadBody();
		$this->body .= "Added Content for Xmas<br />";
	}
}

$christmasEmail = new christmasEmail();
$christmasEmail->loadBody();
echo $christmasEmail->body;

So I finished my code and after a few days I want to send an email with new year wishes. We can use the same approach as Christmas.

class newYearEmail extends eMailBody {
    public function loadBody() {
		parent::loadBody();
		$this->body .= "Added Content for New Year<br />";
	}
}

$newYearEmail = new newYearEmail();
$newYearEmail->loadBody();
echo $newYearEmail->body;

Everything went smoothly and there were no problems. Now, let's say I forgot to greet my visitors on these two occasions (Christmas and New Year) and I want to send both greetings in one email without modifying any code in the base class.

Your mind is immediately filled with the following questions: Will subclassing and inheritance help here? I'm in favor of doing this, but we need to use extra/unnecessary code to achieve this. We can use traits to achieve something similar to multiple inheritance.

solution

The problems we discussed in the previous section can be solved by implementing the decorator pattern.

According to Wikipedia:

The Decorator pattern (also known as Wrapper, an alternative nomenclature shared with the Adapter pattern) is a design pattern that allows static or dynamic addition of behavior to a single object without affecting the behavior of other objects. Same class.

In the previous section, we have seen that we can extend functionality/behavior using a subclass, but when it comes to adding multiple functionality/behavior, it becomes verbose and complex. This is where we should use the decorator pattern.

interface

interface eMailBody {
    public function loadBody();
}

This is a simple interface used to ensure that certain classes must implement the required methods.

Main Email Class

class eMail implements eMailBody {
    public function loadBody() {
		echo "This is Main Email body.<br />";
	} 
}

This is the main class that generates the default body of an email, I usually use it to send emails. However, what I need is to modify the body content based on certain occasions but not change the main email class.

Main Decorator

abstract class emailBodyDecorator implements eMailBody {
    	
	protected $emailBody;
	
	public function __construct(eMailBody $emailBody) {
		$this->emailBody = $emailBody;
	}
	
	abstract public function loadBody();
	
} 

This is our main decorator class, which holds a reference to our main email class and changes its behavior as needed. Here we define an abstract method, loadBody, which the sub-decorator needs to implement to change the behavior.

Sub-decorator

class christmasEmailBody extends emailBodyDecorator {
    	
	public function loadBody() {
		
		echo 'This is Extra Content for Christmas<br />';
		$this->emailBody->loadBody();
		
	}
	
}

class newYearEmailBody extends emailBodyDecorator {

	public function loadBody() {
		
		echo 'This is Extra Content for New Year.<br />';
		$this->emailBody->loadBody();
		
	}

}

Here we have created two subclasses of the main decorator that actually perform behavior changes on our main email class.

Wrap everything together

We have created all the required elements. All we need to do is use our code and enjoy.

interface eMailBody {
    public function loadBody();
}

class eMail implements eMailBody {
	public function loadBody() {
		echo "This is Main Email body.<br />";
	} 
}

abstract class emailBodyDecorator implements eMailBody {
	
	protected $emailBody;
	
	public function __construct(eMailBody $emailBody) {
		$this->emailBody = $emailBody;
	}
	
	abstract public function loadBody();
	
} 

class christmasEmailBody extends emailBodyDecorator {
	
	public function loadBody() {
		
		echo 'This is Extra Content for Christmas<br />';
		$this->emailBody->loadBody();
		
	}
	
}

class newYearEmailBody extends emailBodyDecorator {

	public function loadBody() {
		
		echo 'This is Extra Content for New Year.<br />';
		$this->emailBody->loadBody();
		
	}

}

Now we will use this decorator class in various ways as needed:

/*
 *  Normal Email
 */

$email = new eMail();
$email->loadBody();

// Output
This is Main Email body.


/*
 *  Email with Xmas Greetings
 */

$email = new eMail();
$email = new christmasEmailBody($email);
$email->loadBody();

// Output
This is Extra Content for Christmas
This is Main Email body.

/*
 *  Email with New Year Greetings
 */

$email = new eMail();
$email = new newYearEmailBody($email);
$email->loadBody();


// Output
This is Extra Content for New Year.
This is Main Email body.

/*
 *  Email with Xmas and New Year Greetings
 */

$email = new eMail();
$email = new christmasEmailBody($email);
$email = new newYearEmailBody($email);
$email->loadBody();

// Output
This is Extra Content for New Year.
This is Extra Content for Christmas
This is Main Email body.

We can see that now we have changed the body of the email without modifying the main email class.

in conclusion

Every application we have requires some kind of changes and/or improvements on a regular basis. So in this case we can implement the decorator design pattern which will ultimately improve the code quality and make our code more scalable.

I tried my best to explain the decorator pattern to you, but if you have any other comments or questions, please feel free to add them to the feed below.

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