一、定义
观察者模式（ObserverPattern）也叫做发布订阅模式（Publish/subscribe），其定义如下：
定义对象间一种一对多的依赖关系，使得每当一个对象改变状态，则所有依赖于它的对象都会得到通知并被自动更新。
二、角色
1. Subject 被观察者
定义被观察者必须实现的职责，它必须能够动态地增加、取消观察者。它一般是抽象类或者是实现类，仅仅完成作为被观察者必须实现的职责：管理观察者并通知观察者。
下例是 Java 中已有的 Observable 类，我们开发只需要继承这个类即可，然后调用已写好的 addObserver 方法、deleteObserver 方法和通知方法 notifyObservers 即可。
public class Observable {
private boolean changed = false;
private Vector<Observer> obs;
/** Construct an Observable with zero Observers. */
public Observable() {
obs = new Vector<>();
}
/**
* Adds an observer to the set of observers for this object, provided
* that it is not the same as some observer already in the set.
* The order in which notifications will be delivered to multiple
* observers is not specified. See the class comment.
*
* @param o an observer to be added.
* @throws NullPointerException if the parameter o is null.
*/
public synchronized void addObserver(Observer o) {
if (o == null)
throw new NullPointerException();
if (!obs.contains(o)) {
obs.addElement(o);
}
}
/**
* Deletes an observer from the set of observers of this object.
* Passing <CODE>null</CODE> to this method will have no effect.
* @param o the observer to be deleted.
*/
public synchronized void deleteObserver(Observer o) {
obs.removeElement(o);
}
/**
* If this object has changed, as indicated by the
* <code>hasChanged</code> method, then notify all of its observers
* and then call the <code>clearChanged</code> method to
* indicate that this object has no longer changed.
* <p>
* Each observer has its <code>update</code> method called with two
* arguments: this observable object and <code>null</code>. In other
* words, this method is equivalent to:
* <blockquote><tt>
* notifyObservers(null)</tt></blockquote>
*
* @see java.util.Observable#clearChanged()
* @see java.util.Observable#hasChanged()
* @see java.util.Observer#update(java.util.Observable, java.lang.Object)
*/
public void notifyObservers() {
notifyObservers(null);
}
/**
* If this object has changed, as indicated by the
* <code>hasChanged</code> method, then notify all of its observers
* and then call the <code>clearChanged</code> method to indicate
* that this object has no longer changed.
* <p>
* Each observer has its <code>update</code> method called with two
* arguments: this observable object and the <code>arg</code> argument.
*
* @param arg any object.
* @see java.util.Observable#clearChanged()
* @see java.util.Observable#hasChanged()
* @see java.util.Observer#update(java.util.Observable, java.lang.Object)
*/
public void notifyObservers(Object arg) {
/*
* a temporary array buffer, used as a snapshot of the state of
* current Observers.
*/
Object[] arrLocal;
synchronized (this) {
/* We don't want the Observer doing callbacks into
* arbitrary code while holding its own Monitor.
* The code where we extract each Observable from
* the Vector and store the state of the Observer
* needs synchronization, but notifying observers
* does not (should not). The worst result of any
* potential race-condition here is that:
* 1) a newly-added Observer will miss a
* notification in progress
* 2) a recently unregistered Observer will be
* wrongly notified when it doesn't care
*/
// Android-changed: Call out to hasChanged() to figure out if something changes.
// Upstream code avoids calling the nonfinal hasChanged() from the synchronized block,
// but that would break compatibility for apps that override that method.
// if (!changed)
if (!hasChanged())
return;
arrLocal = obs.toArray();
clearChanged();
}
for (int i = arrLocal.length-1; i>=0; i--)
((Observer)arrLocal[i]).update(this, arg);
}
/**
* Clears the observer list so that this object no longer has any observers.
*/
public synchronized void deleteObservers() {
obs.removeAllElements();
}
/**
* Marks this <tt>Observable</tt> object as having been changed; the
* <tt>hasChanged</tt> method will now return <tt>true</tt>.
*/
protected synchronized void setChanged() {
changed = true;
}
/**
* Indicates that this object has no longer changed, or that it has
* already notified all of its observers of its most recent change,
* so that the <tt>hasChanged</tt> method will now return <tt>false</tt>.
* This method is called automatically by the
* <code>notifyObservers</code> methods.
*
* @see java.util.Observable#notifyObservers()
* @see java.util.Observable#notifyObservers(java.lang.Object)
*/
protected synchronized void clearChanged() {
changed = false;
}
/**
* Tests if this object has changed.
*
* @return <code>true</code> if and only if the <code>setChanged</code>
* method has been called more recently than the
* <code>clearChanged</code> method on this object;
* <code>false</code> otherwise.
* @see java.util.Observable#clearChanged()
* @see java.util.Observable#setChanged()
*/
public synchronized boolean hasChanged() {
return changed;
}
/**
* Returns the number of observers of this <tt>Observable</tt> object.
*
* @return the number of observers of this object.
*/
public synchronized int countObservers() {
return obs.size();
}
}
2. Observer 观察者
观察者接收到消息后，即进行 update（更新方法）操作，对接收到的信息进行处理。通常只是定义一个接口，具体的更新方法由实现类完成。
public interface Observer {
/**
* This method is called whenever the observed object is changed. An
* application calls an <tt>Observable</tt> object's
* <code>notifyObservers</code> method to have all the object's
* observers notified of the change.
*
* @param o the observable object.
* @param arg an argument passed to the <code>notifyObservers</code>
* method.
*/
void update(Observable o, Object arg);
}
三、优缺点
- 优点：
- 观察者和被观察者之间是抽象耦合的，容易扩展
- 缺点：
- 多个观察者不容易调试
- 通知默认是顺序执行的，一个观察者卡壳，会影响到整体效率，一般使用异步的方法避免
四、应用场景
- 关联行为场景。关联行为是可拆分的，而不是组合关系
- 事件多级触发场景
- 跨系统的消息交换场景，如消息队列的处理机制
注意：
观察者模式和责任链模式的最大区别就是观察者广播链在传播的过程中消息是随时更改的，它是由相邻的两个节点协商的消息结构；而责任链模式在消息传递过程中基本上保持消息不可变，如果要改变，也只是在原有的消息上进行修正。
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