Singleton

What is: Singleton is a design pattern that restricts the instantiation of a class to one object. The concept is sometimes generalized to systems that operate more efficiently when only one object exists, or that restrict the instantiation to a certain number of objects. 

When to use: This is useful when exactly one object is needed to coordinate actions across the system.

How to use in JAVA:

public class SingletonDemo {
    private static SingletonDemo instance = null;
    private SingletonDemo() { }
    public static synchronized SingletonDemo getInstance() {
        if (instance == null) {
            instance = new SingletonDemo();
        }
        return instance;
    }
}

Or (I prefer this last one, it is more simple and easy to understand):

public class Singleton {
    private static final Singleton INSTANCE = new Singleton();
 
    private Singleton() {}
 
    public static Singleton getInstance() {
        return INSTANCE;
    }
}

This method has a number of advantages:

• The instance is not constructed until the class is used.
• There is no need to synchronize the getInstance() method, meaning all threads will see the same instance and no (expensive) locking is required.
• The final keyword means that the instance cannot be redefined, ensuring that one (and only one) instance ever exists.

This is a very simple explanation, but helped me a lot. If you have some question, just write in the comments.

See you in the next post !