Design Patterns In Go Language

Overview

Every developer’s primary goal is to write effective, reusable, and legible code, and code structuring primarily addresses this goal.

But when the service expands and has more users as a result of the addition of additional features, this becomes increasingly difficult. Currently, Design Patterns are a hero in that they offer a scalable answer to frequent problems with the overall design structure.

Does Go work well with design patterns? Let’s put some Design Patterns into practise.

What is meant by Design patterns?

Design patterns are a set of best practices and solutions to common problems that software developers encounter when building applications. They provide a way to structure code in a way that is easy to understand, maintain, and extend. In this article, we’ll explore some common design patterns in the Go programming language and provide code examples to illustrate their usage.

Singleton pattern

The singleton pattern is used to ensure that a class has only one instance, and to provide a global access point to that instance. This can be useful when you need to manage a shared resource, such as a database connection or configuration object. In Go, you can implement a singleton using the “sync” package to synchronise access to the shared instance, like this:

Factory pattern

The factory pattern is a creational design pattern that provides an interface for creating objects in a super class, but allows subclasses to alter the type of objects that will be created. This can be useful when you want to create objects that belong to a particular family, but you don’t want to specify the exact class of object that will be created. In Go, you can implement a factory pattern using a function that returns an interface type, like this:

Adapter pattern

The adapter pattern is a structural design pattern that allows you to adapt one interface to another. This can be useful when you have an existing class that provides a certain functionality, but you need to use it in a way that is incompatible with its current interface. In Go, you can implement an adapter pattern by creating a wrapper type that implements the desired interface and delegates method calls to the underlying type, like this:

Observer pattern

The observer pattern is a behavioural design pattern that allows you to define a one-to-many dependency between objects, such that when one object changes state, all of its dependents are notified and updated automatically. This can be useful when you need to update multiple objects in response to a change in another object. In Go, you can implement the observer pattern using channels to communicate state changes between objects, like this:

Builder pattern

The builder pattern is a creational design pattern that allows you to construct complex objects step by step. This can be useful when you want to create objects with many optional parameters, or when you want to provide a clean interface for creating objects that belong to a large class hierarchy. In Go, you can implement a builder pattern using a separate “builder” type that exposes a fluent interface for constructing the desired object, like this:

Prototype pattern

The prototype pattern is a creational design pattern that allows you to create new objects by copying existing ones. This can be useful when creating an object is expensive or time-consuming, and you want to avoid doing it repeatedly. In Go, you can implement a prototype pattern using the “reflect” package to deep-copy an object, like this:

Bridge pattern

The bridge pattern is a structural design pattern that allows you to decouple an abstraction from its implementation, so that the two can vary independently. This can be useful when you want to change the implementation of an object without affecting its clients, or when you want to avoid exposing the implementation details of an object to its clients. In Go, you can implement a bridge pattern using an interface to represent the abstraction, and a separate “implementation” type to represent the concrete implementation, like this:

Decorator pattern

The decorator pattern is a structural design pattern that allows you to add new behavior to an existing object dynamically, by wrapping it in a decorator object. This can be useful when you want to add new functionality to an object without subclassing it, or when you want to add behavior that is conditional on the runtime environment. In Go, you can implement a decorator pattern using an interface to represent the base object, and a separate “decorator” type that wraps the base object and adds new behavior, like this:

Facade pattern

The facade pattern is a structural design pattern that provides a simplified interface to a complex system. This can be useful when you want to hide the complexity of a system from its clients, or when you want to provide a consistent interface to a set of interfaces in a subsystem. In Go, you can implement a facade pattern using a struct to represent the facade object, and embedding the types that make up the subsystem, like this:

Conclusion

These are just a few examples of design patterns that can be useful in Go. There are many more patterns out there, and the best one to use in any given situation will depend on the specific needs of your application. By understanding and using these patterns, you can write more organised, maintainable, and scalable code in Go