Commonly Used Interfaces and Patterns

Abstract

The recipes in this chapter show you how to implement patterns you will use frequently during the development of Microsoft .NET Framework applications. Some of these patterns are formalized using interfaces defined in the .NET Framework class library. Others are less rigid, but still require you to take specific approaches to their design and implementation of your types. The recipes in this chapter describe how to do the following:

• Create serializable types that you can easily store to disk, send across the network, or pass by value across application domain boundaries (recipe 13-1)

• Provide a mechanism that creates accurate and complete copies (clones) of objects (recipe 13-2)

• Implement types that are easy to compare and sort (recipe 13-3)

• Support the enumeration of the elements contained in custom collections by creating a custom iterator (recipe 13-4)

• Ensure that a type that uses unmanaged resources correctly releases those resources when they are no longer needed (recipe 13-5)

• Display string representations of objects that vary based on format specifiers (recipe 13-6)

• Correctly implement custom exception and event argument types, which you will use frequently in the development of your applications (recipes 13-7 and 13-8)

• Implement the commonly used Singleton and Observer design patterns using the built-in features of VB .NET and the .NET Framework class library (recipes 13-9 and 13-10)