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 cover the following:

• Creating serializable types that you can easily store to disk, sending across the network, or passing by value across application domain boundaries (recipe 14-1)

• Providing a mechanism that creates accurate and complete copies (clones) of objects (recipe 14-2)

• Implementing types that are easy to compare and sort (recipe 14-3)

• Supporting the enumeration of the elements contained in custom collections by creating a custom iterator (recipe 14-4)

• Ensuring that a type that uses unmanaged resources correctly releases those resources when they are no longer needed (recipe 14-5)

• Displaying string representations of objects that vary based on format specifiers (recipe 14-6)

• Correctly implementing custom exception and event argument types, which you will use frequently in the development of your applications (recipes 14-7 and 14-8)

• Implementing the commonly used Singleton and Observer design patterns using the built-in features of VB .NET and the .NET Framework class library (recipes 14-9 and 14-10)