Book Image

Hands-On Design Patterns with C++ (Second Edition) - Second Edition

By : Fedor G. Pikus
5 (1)
Book Image

Hands-On Design Patterns with C++ (Second Edition) - Second Edition

5 (1)
By: Fedor G. Pikus

Overview of this book

C++ is a general-purpose programming language designed for efficiency, performance, and flexibility. Design patterns are commonly accepted solutions to well-recognized design problems. In essence, they are a library of reusable components, only for software architecture, and not for a concrete implementation. This book helps you focus on the design patterns that naturally adapt to your needs, and on the patterns that uniquely benefit from the features of C++. Armed with the knowledge of these patterns, you’ll spend less time searching for solutions to common problems and tackle challenges with the solutions developed from experience. You’ll also explore that design patterns are a concise and efficient way to communicate, as patterns are a familiar and recognizable solution to a specific problem and can convey a considerable amount of information with a single line of code. By the end of this book, you’ll have a deep understanding of how to use design patterns to write maintainable, robust, and reusable software.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
1
Part 1: Getting Started with C++ Features and Concepts
5
Part 2: Common C++ Idioms
10
Part 3: C++ Design Patterns
18
Part 4: Advanced C++ Design Patterns

The Template Method Pattern and the Non-Virtual Idiom

The Template Method is one of the classic Gang of Four design patterns, or, more formally, one of the 24 patterns described in the book Design Patterns – Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides. It is a behavioral design pattern, meaning that it describes a way for communicating between different objects. As an object-oriented language, C++, of course, fully supports the Template Method pattern, although there are some implementation details that are specific or unique to C++ that this chapter will elucidate.

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

  • What is the Template Method pattern, and what problems does it solve?
  • What is the non-virtual interface?
  • Should you make virtual functions public, private, or protected by default?
  • Should you always make destructors virtual and public in polymorphic classes?