Singleton is a creational design pattern, which ensures that only one object of its kind exists and provides a single point of access to it for any other code.
Singleton has almost the same pros and cons as global variables. Although they’re super-handy, they break the modularity of your code.
You can’t just use a class that depends on a Singleton in some other context, without carrying over the Singleton to the other context. Most of the time, this limitation comes up during the creation of unit tests.
Usage examples: A lot of developers consider the Singleton pattern an antipattern. That’s why its usage is on the decline in Ruby code.
Identification: Singleton can be recognized by a static creation method, which returns the same cached object.
Naïve Singleton
It’s pretty easy to implement a sloppy Singleton. You just need to hide the constructor and implement a static creation method.
The same class behaves incorrectly in a multithreaded environment. Multiple threads can call the creation method simultaneously and get several instances of Singleton class.
main.rb: Conceptual example
# The Singleton class defines the `instance` method that lets clients access the # unique singleton instance. class Singleton @instance = new private_class_method :new # The static method that controls the access to the singleton instance. # # This implementation let you subclass the Singleton class while keeping just # one instance of each subclass around. def self.instance @instance end # Finally, any singleton should define some business logic, which can be # executed on its instance. def some_business_logic # ... end end # The client code. s1 = Singleton.instance s2 = Singleton.instance if s1.equal?(s2) print 'Singleton works, both variables contain the same instance.' else print 'Singleton failed, variables contain different instances.' end
output.txt: Execution result
Singleton works, both variables contain the same instance.
Thread-safe Singleton
To fix the problem, you have to synchronize threads during the first creation of the Singleton object.
main.rb: Conceptual example
# The Singleton class defines the `instance` method that lets clients access the # unique singleton instance. class Singleton attr_reader :value @instance_mutex = Mutex.new private_class_method :new def initialize(value) @value = value end # The static method that controls the access to the singleton instance. # # This implementation let you subclass the Singleton class while keeping just # one instance of each subclass around. def self.instance(value) return @instance if @instance @instance_mutex.synchronize do @instance ||= new(value) end @instance end # Finally, any singleton should define some business logic, which can be # executed on its instance. def some_business_logic # ... end end # @param [String] value def test_singleton(value) singleton = Singleton.instance(value) puts singleton.value end # The client code. puts "If you see the same value, then singleton was reused (yay!)\n"\ "If you see different values, then 2 singletons were created (booo!!)\n\n"\ "RESULT:\n\n" process1 = Thread.new { test_singleton('FOO') } process2 = Thread.new { test_singleton('BAR') } process1.join process2.join
output.txt: Execution result
If you see the same value, then singleton was reused (yay!) If you see different values, then 2 singletons were created (booo!!) RESULT: FOO FOO
