The Iterator pattern
Iterator is an entity that knows how to traverse a list of elements in a collection in an abstracted way. You can think of this pattern as an abstraction over for loops. The main idea is that you want to iterate over a data structure without knowing its inner details or how to access its elements in a particular order. You may want to traverse the elements in a direct or reversed order by simply requesting the right Iterator object.
An analogy of this pattern is when you have a saved list of favorite shows on your hard drive. Each of these videos is saved in a different folder, but you can iterate over them one by one from your UI view without knowing the details of their location in the disk.
We explain in detail when to use this pattern next.
When to use the Iterator pattern?
You want to consider using an Iterator for the following use cases:
- Traversing a complex data structure: When you have a data structure that is not traversable via a...