ChainOfResponsibility

Chain of Responsibility

Avoid coupling the sender of a request to its receiver by giving more than one object (Middleware) a chance to handle the request. Chain the receiving objects and pass the request along the chain until an object handles it.

Problem

• Coupling the sender of a request to its receiver should be avoided
• It should be possible that more than one receiver can handle a request and handler isn't known a priori.

Solution

Define a chain of receiver objects having the responsibility to either handle a request or forward it to the next receiver on the chain (if any).

Common Structure

Source: Refactoring.Guru

• Handler & BaseHandler
  • defines an interface for handling requests
  • (optional) implements the successor link
• ConcreteHandler
  • handles requests it is responsible for; otherwise it forwards the requests to its successor
• Client
  • initiates the request to a ConcreteHandler object on the chain.

Collaboration

Source: javaobsession.wordpress.com

• When a client issues a request, the request propagates along the chain until a ConcreteHandler object takes responsibility for handling it.

Benefits

• Reduces coupling between senders of requests and their receivers
  • Every handler keeps only a single reference to its successor.
• Added flexibility in assigning responsibilities to objects
  • Responsibilties can be added or changed at run-time.
• Follows the Single Responsibility Principle

Drawbacks

• Some requests may end up unhandled
  • Since a request has no explicit receiver, there is no guarantee it'll be handled

Example

Definition

Usage

Comparison with other patterns

• Composite - Chain of responsibility is often applied in conjuction with Composite. In this case, a component's parent can act as its successor.

• Decorator - has very common sequence diagram. They both rely on the recursive composition to pass execution through a series of objects.

However, Chain of Responsibility handlers can execute arbitrary actions, independent of each other. They can also terminate further chaining of the request at will. On the other hand, Decorator extends a particular behavior and suppose to keep its interface consistent. Furthermore, Decorators are not allowed to break the execution chain at will.

Sequence Diagram of Decorator Pattern