Structural Patterns - Proxy Pattern

The proxy pattern is used when you need to represent a complex with a simpler one. If creation of object is expensive, its creation can be postponed till the very need arises and till then, a simple object can represent it. This simple object is called the "Proxy" for the complex object

The cases can be innumerable why we can use the proxy. Let's take a scenario. Say, we want to attach an image with the email. Now, suppose this email has to be sent to 1 lakh consumers in a campaign. Attaching the image and sending along with the email will be a very heavy operation. What we can do instead is, send the image as a link to one of the sevlet. The place holder of the image will be sent. Once the email reaches the consumer, the image place holder will call the servlet and load the image at run time straight from the server.Let's try and understand this pattern with the help of a non-software example as we have tried to do throughout this article.
Bank.java


Let' say we need to withdraw money to make some purchase. The way we will do it is, go to an ATM and get the money, or purchase straight with a cheque. In old days when ATMs and cheques were not available, what used to be the way??? Well, get your passbook, go to bank, get withdrawal form there, stand in a queue and withdraw money. Then go to the shop where you want to make the purchase. In this way, we can say that ATM or cheque in modern times act as proxies to the Bank.

Let's look at the code now.

Bank will define the entire method described above. There are references of classes like You (as the person who wants to withdraw money), also Account, as persons account. These are dummy classes and can be considered of fulfilling the responsibilities as described.

package structural.proxy; /** * Bank.java * The class acts as the main object for which * the proxy has to be created. As described, going * to bank for withdrawal is very costly time wise. */ public class Bank {
	private int numberInQueue; /** * Method getMoneyForPurchase * This method is responsible for the entire banking * operation described in the write-up */ public double getMoneyForPurchase(double amountNeeded) { // get object for person You you = new You("Prashant"); // get obj for account Account account = new Account(); // get person's account number String accountNumber = you.getAccountNumber(); // passbook got. boolean gotPassbook = you.getPassbook(); // get number in queue int number = getNumberInQueue(); // the number will decrease every few mins while (number != 0) { number--; } // now when the number = 0, check if balance is sufficient boolean isBalanceSufficient = account.checkBalance(accountNumber, amountNeeded); if(isBalanceSufficient) return amountNeeded; else return 0; } /** * returns the number in the queue */ private int getNumberInQueue() { return numberInQueue; }
}// End of class

Also, the second class is ATMProxy. This also defines the way the transaction can be handled for withdrawal of money.

ATMProxy.java

package structural.proxy; public class ATMProxy {
	/** * Method getMoneyForPurchase * This method is responsible for the entire banking * operation described in the write-up */ public double getMoneyForPurchase(double amountNeeded) { // get obj of You to get card You you = new You("Prashant"); // get obj for account Account account = new Account(); boolean isBalanceAvailable = false; // if card there, go ahead if(you.getCard()) { isBalanceAvailable = account.checkBalance(you.getAccountNumber(), amountNeeded); } if(isBalanceAvailable) return amountNeeded; else return 0; }
}// End of class

Here, we can also create another proxy called ChequeProxy. I am not creating it here as the message I wanted to send across has been conveyed with the help of one proxy only. We can see here that creation of object of Bank is very costly, effort and time wise, and so, we can as well use a proxy called ATM to get the result. ATM can internally communicate with the Bank object. So, ATM here is also acting like a façade.
This might and might not happen. It can happen that we at a later stage have to create the same heavy object. We just want to postpone the creation of object to the last minute so that the application is not loaded by resources utilized for creating the object.