The Bridge Pattern is a design pattern in software development used to decouple abstraction and implementation. It belongs to the category of structural patterns and helps separate the hierarchy of classes from their implementation.
The main goal of the Bridge Pattern is to create a bridge between an abstraction and its implementation so that both can vary independently. It allows combining different abstractions with different implementations without tightly coupling them together. This increases code flexibility and extensibility.
The pattern uses two separate hierarchies: an abstraction hierarchy and an implementation hierarchy. The abstraction class contains a reference to the implementation interface and delegates calls to the implementation methods. This way, different abstractions can interact with the same implementation in different ways.
Benefits of the Bridge Pattern:
Decoupling of Abstraction and Implementation: Changes to the abstraction or the implementation do not affect each other.
Extensibility: It's easy to add new abstractions or implementations as they can be developed independently.
Improved Reusability: Combining different abstractions and implementations leads to a more flexible and reusable codebase.
An example of the Bridge Pattern could be a drawing application where there are different shapes (abstraction), such as circles and squares, and different drawing tools (implementation), such as brushes and pencils. By using the Bridge Pattern, different shapes can be combined with different drawing tools without being tightly coupled in a rigid hierarchy. This creates a flexible and extensible solution.
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