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Visitor and Double Dispatch

Let’s take a look at following class hierarchy of geometric shapes (beware the pseudocode):

interface Graphic is
    method draw()

class Shape implements Graphic is
    field id
    method draw()
    // ...

class Dot extends Shape is
    field x, y
    method draw()
    // ...

class Circle extends Dot is
    field radius
    method draw()
    // ...

class Rectangle extends Shape is
    field width, height
    method draw()
    // ...

class CompoundGraphic implements Graphic is
    field children: array of Graphic
    method draw()
    // ...

The code works fine and the app is in production. But one day you decided to make an export feature. The export code would look alien if placed in these classes. So instead of adding export to all classes of this hierarchy you decided to create a new class, external to the hierarchy and put all the export logic inside. The class would get methods for exporting public state of each object into XML strings:

class Exporter is
    method export(s: Shape) is
        print("Exporting shape")
    method export(d: Dot)
        print("Exporting dot")
    method export(c: Circle)
        print("Exporting circle")
    method export(r: Rectangle)
        print("Exporting rectangle")
    method export(cs: CompoundGraphic)
        print("Exporting compound")

The code looks good, but let’s try it out:

class App() is
    method export(shape: Shape) is
        Exporter exporter = new Exporter()
        exporter.export(shape);

app.export(new Circle());
// Unfortunatelly, this will output "Exporting shape".

Wait! Why?!

Thinking as a compiler

Note: the following information is true for the most modern object-oriented programming languages (Java, C#, PHP, and others).

Late/dynamic binding

Pretend that you’re a compiler. You have to decide how to compile the following code:

method drawShape(shape: Shape) is
    shape.draw();

Let’s see... the draw method defined in Shape class. Wait a sec, but there are also four subclasses that override this method. Can we safely decide which of the implementations to call here? It doesn’t look so. The only way to know for sure is to launch the program and check the class of an object passed to the method. The only thing we know for sure is that object will have implementation of the draw method.

So the resulting machine code will be checking class of the object passed to the shape parameter and picking the draw implementation from the appropriate class.

Such a dynamic type check is called late (or dynamic) binding:

  • Late, because we link object and its implementation after compilation, at runtime.
  • Dynamic, because every new object might need to be linked to a different implementation.

Early/static binding

Now, let’s “compile” following code:

method exportShape(shape: Shape) is
    Exporter exporter = new Exporter()
    exporter.export(shape);

Everything is clear with the second line: the Exporter class doesn’t have a custom constructor, so we just instantiate an object. What’s about the export call? The Exporter has five methods with the same name that differ with parameter types. Which one to call? Looks like we’re going to need a dynamic binding here as well.

But there’s another problem. What if there’s a shape class that doesn’t have appropriate export method in Exporter class? For instance, an Ellipse object. The compiler can’t guarantee that the appropriate overloaded method exists in contrast with overridden methods. The ambiguous situation arises which a compiler can’t allow.

Therefore, compiler developers use a safe path and use the early (or static) binding for overloaded methods:

  • Early because it happens at compile time, before the program is launched.
  • Static because it can’t be altered at runtime.

Let’s return to our example. We’re sure that the incoming argument will be of Shape hierarchy: either the Shape class or one of its subclasses. We also know that Exporter class has a basic implementation of the export that supports Shape class: export(s: Shape).

That’s the only implementation that can be safely linked to a given code without making things ambiguous. That’s why even if we pass a Rectangle object into exportShape, the exporter will still call an export(s: Shape) method.

Double dispatch

Double dispatch is a trick that allows using dynamic binding alongside with overloaded methods. Here how it’s done:

class Visitor is
    method visit(s: Shape) is
        print("Visited shape")
    method visit(d: Dot)
        print("Visited dot")

interface Graphic is
    method accept(v: Visitor)

class Shape implements Graphic is
    method accept(v: Visitor)
        // Compiler knows for sure that `this` is a `Shape`.
        // Which means that the `visit(s: Shape)` can be safely called.
        v.visit(this)

class Dot extends Shape is
    method accept(v: Visitor)
        // Compiler knows that `this` is a `Dot`.
        // Which means that the `visit(s: Dot)` can be safely called.
        v.visit(this)


Visitor v = new Visitor();
Graphic g = new Dot();

// The `accept` method is overriden, not overloaded. Compiler binds it
// dynamically. Therefore the `accept` will be executed on a class that
// corresponds to an object calling a method (in our case, the `Dot` class).
g.accept(v);

// Output: "Visited dot"

Afterword

Even though the Visitor pattern is built on the double dispatch principle, that’s not its primary purpose. Visitor lets you add “external” operations to a whole class hierarchy without changing the existing code of these classes.