original source: http://www.andrewcbancroft.com/2015/03/26/what-is-delegation-a-swift-developers-guide/
(개념정리 예를 들어 ios에서 UITableViewDelegate 를 제공한다. 그리고 이 protocol 안에 tableView(_:willSelectRowAtIndexPath:) 와 같은 함수들이 들어있다. 이 함수 tableView(_:willSelectRowAtIndexPath:)를 개발자가 conform함으로써 개발자가 만든 함수가 delegating 하게된다(ios가 수행할일을 대신). 이때 이 함수는 대신 작업을 수행함으로 delegate라고 할수 있다.그리고 ios는 delegator라고 할수있다.이를 통해 얻을수 있는 두가지 효과는 크게 communication과 cumstomization이다 아래글을 읽고 확인)
What is the delegation design pattern?
To read that “delegation is a design pattern that [insert explanation here]” never really clicked with me. Many who are new to programming have not dealt extensively with “design patterns”, so it doesn’t always suffice to define delegation in those terms.
I suspect that since Swift has lowered the barrier to entry for iOS development, many who are new to the platform are also new to coding in general, so here’s my attempt to explain what clicked for me regarding what delegation is:
Design pattern
First, take the phrase “design pattern”.
Design implies architecture. It connotes a strategy for organizing something. Design conveys the method by which components will work together to accomplish an end.
Pattern implies that there is some repeatable process that has honed in around a common thread… a common practice… a predictable method for doing something. “Pattern” gives the impression that such a practice has converged over time into something that is now well-known, well-understood, and commonly used. I imagine a sort of “survival of the fittest” approach to process and practice. Things that didn’t converge or that were weaker in the real world fell away and the strongest survived into this thing we call “pattern”.
A design pattern in software terms, then, is a method for architecting, strategizing about, and organizing an application’s code in such a way that has been found to be commonplace, repeatable, and practically sound over time.
Delegation
Now take the word delegation. Three things come to my mind:
- The verb, “to delegate”, meaning “to give control”
- The noun, “a delegate”, meaning “a person acting for another”
- The made-up noun, “a delegator“, or more properly, a principal, meaning “a person who delegates to another”
In the real world, the word delegation encapsulates relationship and responsibility. A delegator/principal (noun) would delegate (verb) control or responsibility to another person called a delegate.
How could we map this to software? Well, it actually falls in line quite nicely.
Rather than people, we’re dealing with instances of classes (or other data structures like structs, but I’m just going to keep it simple and say “class” to encapsulate the idea). For delegation to occur in software, you’d have a situation where one class (a delegator/principal class) would delegate control or responsibility, here meaning behavioral logic, to another class called a delegate.
How is delegation used?
So yes… delegation is a design pattern. It’s a design pattern that exists on other platforms, but it is one that has been heavily adopted by Apple and is ubiquitous throughout the iOS APIs. It’s a design pattern that shifts responsibility from one class to another, thereby creating a separation of responsibilities and concerns. But what kinds of responsibilities and concerns? How is delegation used in practice?
Communication
In practice, delegation is most often used as a way for one class to communicate to another class. Observing some of the actions that delegates perform from Apple’s own APIs give us clues about this. Take the following samples from UITableViewDelegate as an example:
- tableView(_:willSelectRowAtIndexPath:)
- tableView(_:didSelectRowAtIndexPath:)
- tableView(_:didHighlightRowAtIndexPath:)
Or how about a sampling from UIScrollViewDelegate:
- scrollViewDidScroll(_:)
- scrollViewWillBeginDragging(_:)
- scrollViewWillEndDragging(_:withVelocity:targetContentOffset:)
- scrollViewDidEndDragging(_:willDecelerate:)
My observation of Apple’s APIs indicates to me that one of the intended uses for delegation is to allow one instance to communicate back to some other instance that something will/did happen. The table view or scroll view delegates the opportunity to perform some action in response to some lifecycle event to another class, namely, its delegate.
It’s also worth noting the scope of the communication that delegation is intended to be used for. Whereas NSNotificationCenter fits the need for one instance to broadcast a message intended for more than one listening instance, delegation fits the scenario where an instance only needs to send a message to a single listener (the delegate).
Customization
Another common usage for delegation is to provide a delegate instance the opportunity to customize certain aspects of the delegating instance’s internal state. Once again, clues from a few of Apple’s APIs shed some light on this usage scenario. Let’s look at UITableViewDelegate first:
- tableView(_:heightForRowAtIndexPath:)
- tableView(_:editActionsForRowAtIndexPath:)
- tableView(_:indentationLevelForRowAtIndexPath:)
- tableView(_:shouldHighlightRowAtIndexPath:)
These are all customization-points that a UITableView allows its delegate to have a say in. Some of the methods are so important that the table view can’t display itself unless it gets this information from its delegate. The point here is that the table view is shifting responsibility for the implementation of that logic off to its delegate, allowing for greater controlled flexibility and customization.
Wrapping up
With delegation being such a heavily utilized strategy for organizing an iOS application’s logic, understanding what it is becomes key concern. In this article we unpacked the terms “design pattern” and “delegation” to get a grasp of why those words were chosen to describe the strategy. Finally, we looked at how the delegation pattern is used in practice, observing that two common use-cases for delegation: class-to-class communication and customization.
더심화된내용) https://www.andrewcbancroft.com/2015/04/08/how-delegation-works-a-swift-developer-guide/
