Observer Design Pattern

Question

In the Observer Design Pattern, the subject notifies all observers by calling the update() operation of each observer. One way of doing this is

void notify() {
   for (observer: observers) {
      observer.update(this);
   }
}

But the problem here is each observer is updated in a sequence and update operation for an observer might not be called till all the observers before it is updated. If there is an observer that has an infinite loop for update then all the observer after it will never be notified.

Question:

1. Is there a way to get around this problem?
2. If so what would be a good example?

Answer 1

The problem is the infinite loop, not the one-after-the-other notifications.

If you wanted things to update concurrently, you'd need to fire things off on different threads - in which case, each listener would need to synchronize with the others in order to access the object that fired the event.

Complaining about one infinite loop stopping other updates from happening is like complaining that taking a lock and then going into an infinite loop stops others from accessing the locked object - the problem is the infinite loop, not the lock manager.

Answer 2

Classic design patterns do not involve parallelism and threading. You'd have to spawn N threads for the N observers. Be careful though since their interaction to this will have to be done in a thread safe manner.

Answer 3

You could make use of the java.utils.concurrent.Executors.newFixedThreadPool(int nThreads) method, then call the invokeAll method (could make use of the one with the timout too to avoid the infinite loop).

You would change your loop to add a class that is Callable that takes the "observer" and the "this" and then call the update method in the "call" method.

Take a look at this package for more info.

This is a quick and dirty implementation of what I was talking about:

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.concurrent.Callable;
import java.util.concurrent.CopyOnWriteArrayList;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService;
import java.util.concurrent.Executors;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

public class Main
{
    private Main()
    {
    }

    public static void main(final String[] argv)
    {
        final Watched       watched;
        final List<Watcher> watchers;

        watched = new Watched();
        watchers = makeWatchers(watched, 10);
        watched.notifyWatchers(9);
    }

    private static List<Watcher> makeWatchers(final Watched watched,
                                              final int     count)
    {
        final List<Watcher> watchers;

        watchers = new ArrayList<Watcher>(count);

        for(int i = 0; i < count; i++)
        {
            final Watcher watcher;

            watcher = new Watcher(i + 1);
            watched.addWatcher(watcher);
            watchers.add(watcher);
        }

        return (watchers);
    }
}

class Watched
{
    private final List<Watcher> watchers;

    {
        watchers = new ArrayList<Watcher>();
    }

    public void addWatcher(final Watcher watcher)
    {
        watchers.add(watcher);
    }

    public void notifyWatchers(final int seconds)
    {
        final List<Watcher>         currentWatchers;
        final List<WatcherCallable> callables;
        final ExecutorService       service;

        currentWatchers = new CopyOnWriteArrayList<Watcher>(watchers);
        callables       = new ArrayList<WatcherCallable>(currentWatchers.size());

        for(final Watcher watcher : currentWatchers)
        {
            final WatcherCallable callable;

            callable = new WatcherCallable(watcher);
            callables.add(callable);
        }

        service = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(callables.size());

        try
        {
            final boolean value;

            service.invokeAll(callables, seconds, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
            value = service.awaitTermination(seconds, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
            System.out.println("done: " + value);
        }
        catch (InterruptedException ex)
        {
        }

        service.shutdown();
        System.out.println("leaving");
    }

    private class WatcherCallable
        implements Callable<Void>
    {
        private final Watcher watcher;

        WatcherCallable(final Watcher w)
        {
            watcher = w;
        }

        public Void call()
        {
            watcher.update(Watched.this);
            return (null);
        }
    }
}

class Watcher
{
    private final int value;

    Watcher(final int val)
    {
        value = val;
    }

    public void update(final Watched watched)
    {
        try
        {
            Thread.sleep(value * 1000);
        }
        catch (InterruptedException ex)
        {
            System.out.println(value + "interupted");
        }

        System.out.println(value + " done");
    }
}

Answer 4

I'd be more concerned about the observer throwing an exception than about it looping indefinitely. Your current implementation would not notify the remaining observers in such an event.