My use case
Lately I’ve been using a lot the decorator pattern with repositories on Teen Quotes. My use case is somewhat simple: I use a relational database (MySQL) but sometimes I what to cache the results of some queries in a key-value store (Redis / Memcached for instance). With something like that, I don’t need to hit my database for queries that are always run or are slow to run, I’ll hit my key-value store instead. It’ll reduce the pressure on my database and will give some results faster for the application.
The decorator pattern
If you’re not familiar with the decorator pattern yet, it’s quite simple to use and I’m sure you’ll love it in no time. Basically, the decorator pattern allows behavior to be added to an individual object, either statically or dynamically, without affecting the behavior of other objects from the same class. As Richard Bagshaw said, the idea is that you take an object, and you wrap this object in another object which provides additional functionality, and you keep wrapping extra classes repeatedly for each additional requirement.
If you want to see some real world examples, continue to read this blog post or go directly to Laracasts.
Some code
I’ll show you something I’ve been working on last week: the ability to add tags to quotes. A “tag” is like a category for a “quote” (a post, an article, whatever you want to call it). I’m using Laravel with Eloquent for my relational database. I’ve created an interface called TagRepository.
namespace TeenQuotes\Tags\Repositories;
use TeenQuotes\Tags\Models\Tag;
use TeenQuotes\Quotes\Models\Quote;
class DbTagRepository implements TagRepository {
/**
* Create a new tag
*
* @param string $name
* @return \TeenQuotes\Tags\Models\Tag
*/
public function create($name)
{
return Tag::create(compact('name'));
}
/**
* Get a tag thanks to its name
*
* @param string $name
* @return \TeenQuotes\Tags\Models\Tag|null
*/
public function getByName($name)
{
return Tag::whereName($name)->first();
}
/**
* Add a tag to a quote
*
* @param \TeenQuotes\Quotes\Models\Quote $q
* @param \TeenQuotes\Tags\Models\Tag $t
*/
public function tagQuote(Quote $q, Tag $t)
{
$q->tags()->attach($t);
}
/**
* Remove a tag from a quote
*
* @param \TeenQuotes\Quotes\Models\Quote $q
* @param \TeenQuotes\Tags\Models\Tag $t
*/
public function untagQuote(Quote $q, Tag $t)
{
$q->tags()->detach($t);
}
/**
* Get a list of tags for a given quote
*
* @param \TeenQuotes\Quotes\Models\Quote $q
* @return array
*/
public function tagsForQuote(Quote $q)
{
return $q->tags()->lists('name');
}
/**
* Get the total number of quotes having a tag
*
* @param \TeenQuotes\Tags\Models\Tag $t
* @return int
*/
public function totalQuotesForTag(Tag $t)
{
return $t->quotes()->count();
}
}
Pretty simple stuff, I’m sure you’ve seen this multiple times. Let’s move on to the interesting part: the caching layer. We will create a new class CachingTagRepository implementing the same interface TagRepository. The key thing is that we’ll require a TagRepository class to be given in the constructor of this new class. Ultimately, we will pass the DB layer here.
namespace TeenQuotes\Tags\Repositories;
use Cache;
use TeenQuotes\Tags\Models\Tag;
use TeenQuotes\Quotes\Models\Quote;
class CachingTagRepository implements TagRepository {
/**
* @var \TeenQuotes\Tags\Repositories\TagRepository
*/
private $tags;
public function __construct(TagRepository $tags)
{
// The key thing is here: we assume we've already
// a class that is implementing the interface.
// We can rely on that!
$this->tags = $tags;
}
/**
* Create a new tag
*
* @param string $name
* @return \TeenQuotes\Tags\Models\Tag
*/
public function create($name)
{
return $this->tags->create($name);
}
/**
* Get a tag thanks to its name
*
* @param string $name
* @return \TeenQuotes\Tags\Models\Tag|null
*/
public function getByName($name)
{
$callback = function() use ($name)
{
return $this->tags->getByName($name);
};
return Cache::rememberForever('tags.name-'.$name, $callback);
}
/**
* Add a tag to a quote
*
* @param \TeenQuotes\Quotes\Models\Quote $q
* @param \TeenQuotes\Tags\Models\Tag $t
*/
public function tagQuote(Quote $q, Tag $t)
{
Cache::forget($this->cacheNameForListTags($q));
$keyTotal = $this->cacheNameTotalQuotesForTag($t);
if (Cache::has($keyTotal))
Cache::increment($keyTotal);
return $this->tags->tagQuote($q, $t);
}
/**
* Remove a tag from a quote
*
* @param \TeenQuotes\Quotes\Models\Quote $q
* @param \TeenQuotes\Tags\Models\Tag $t
*/
public function untagQuote(Quote $q, Tag $t)
{
Cache::forget($this->cacheNameForListTags($q));
$keyTotal = $this->cacheNameTotalQuotesForTag($t);
if (Cache::has($keyTotal))
Cache::decrement($keyTotal);
return $this->tags->untagQuote($q, $t);
}
/**
* Get a list of tags for a given quote
*
* @param \TeenQuotes\Quotes\Models\Quote $q
* @return array
*/
public function tagsForQuote(Quote $q)
{
$key = $this->cacheNameForListTags($q);
$callback = function() use($q)
{
return $this->tags->tagsForQuote($q);
};
return Cache::remember($key, 10, $callback);
}
/**
* Get the total number of quotes having a tag
*
* @param \TeenQuotes\Tags\Models\Tag $t
* @return int
*/
public function totalQuotesForTag(Tag $t)
{
$key = $this->cacheNameTotalQuotesForTag($t);
$callback = function() use ($t)
{
return $this->tags->totalQuotesForTag($t);
};
return Cache::remember($key, 10, $callback);
}
/**
* Get the key name when we list tags for a quote
*
* @param \TeenQuotes\Quotes\Models\Quote $q
* @return string
*/
private function cacheNameForListTags(Quote $q)
{
return 'tags.quote-'.$q->id.'.list-name';
}
/**
* Get the key name to have the number of quotes
* having a tag
*
* @param \TeenQuotes\Tags\Models\Tag $t
* @return string
*/
private function cacheNameTotalQuotesForTag(Tag $t)
{
return 'tags.tag-'.$t->name.'.total-quotes';
}
}
You see, we do some things before (or after) calling the initial implementation, to add some functionalities (here a caching layer). Sometimes we directly defer to the initial implementation (see the create method).
Bonus: registering that in the IoC container
Let’s bind our TagRepository interface to the caching layer and the storage layer in a service provider!
namespace TeenQuotes\Tags;
use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;
use TeenQuotes\Tags\Repositories\CachingTagRepository;
use TeenQuotes\Tags\Repositories\DbTagRepository;
use TeenQuotes\Tags\Repositories\TagRepository;
class TagsServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider {
/**
* Bootstrap the application events.
*
* @return void
*/
public function boot()
{
//
}
/**
* Register the service provider.
*
* @return void
*/
public function register()
{
$this->registerBindings();
}
private function registerBindings()
{
$this->app->bind(TagRepository::class, function()
{
return new CachingTagRepository(new DbTagRepository);
});
}
}
Et voilà ! Happy coding!
