Proxy Pattern

Problem Statement

I have a method which does something great, and is nice and small. It does everything i want, except some small feature that isn't core to the class. For example, I want to do some fudging for the input parameters and/or fudging the output parameters. I want to create another class to handle these orthogonal requirements.

TL;DR - Short summary

Wrap the original object in a proxy which looks like the original object to the outside world. Delegate calls to the original object eventually. This is an example of Aspect Oriented Programming.

Code Example

I'm building this example up as a series of requirements

Requirement 1: I want to be able to get my bank balance from the bank.

Requirement 2: I want to be able to log the fact someone has checked their bank balance

Requirement 3: I want to tell everyone that their bank balance is double of what it is really. But logging should log the correct value.

Requirement 4: I've changed my mind. It's hard for me to have plausible deniability if i log actual bank balances. Fudge that as well

Requirement 5: I want to cache the balance. I still expect logging and doubling.

A note on the example: Requirement 3 (the doubling filter) should probably go into the first class, it's core to the business. I just made it a proxy filter to illustrate the point about output fudging.

Conditions for a good proxy

• The constructor accepts the item it is proxying.
• The proxy passes requests to the original object in at least one branch of the code
• The proxy honors all methods of the original object with the same signature (in java world, implements the same interface)
• Proxies must be composable (this will follow from the point above): Proxy1.new(Proxy2.new(Proxy3.new(object)))
• That does not mean the order of proxies is immaterial

Practical Uses

• A proxy that caches the response from the inner method
• A proxy that runs the inner method in a single database transaction
• A proxy that adds logging before and after the method is called
• A proxy that validates inputs

DynamicProxy

In the examples above, we overrode a single method bank_balance. Now, imaging you want a proxy to overwrite 50 different methods of an object. Enter DynamicProxy for java, and DynamicProxy/SimpleProxy for .NET. These let you override all methods in a particular interface.

Of course, ruby doesn't need that thanks to method_missing!

Rack filters

Rack provides an easy way to add proxy pattern to the app called via filters (rails cleans this up as around filters). A filter which does nothing will be as follows (notice what the constructor accepts, and what methods the filter implements)

Further Reading

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_pattern
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect-oriented_programming