Singleton Design Pattern: A Simple Way to Create Singleton Objects

What is Singleton Design Pattern?

The Singleton design pattern is –

  • A Creational Design Pattern
  • Used for resource-intensive objects
  • Restricts multiple instantiations of a class and ensures that only one instance of the class exists in the JVM
  • Provides a global access point to get the instance of the class
  • Some common uses are logger objects, driver objects, caching, thread pools, database connections, etc.

Typical implementation

  • Private constructor
  • Private static variable
  • Public static method [Global access point]
A typical implementation of a singleton design pattern

Challenges and Resolution for Singleton Objects

Break by Reflection Problem

Break by Reflection problem in Singleton

Break by Reflection Problem – Fixed

Fixing Break by Reflection problem in Singleton

Serialization & Deserialization issue

Serialization/Deserialization issue in Singleton

Serialization & Deserialization issue – Fixed

Serialization/Deserialization issue fix in singleton

Cloning Problem in Singleton

Clone problem in Singleton objects

Cloning Problem in Singleton – Fixed

Clone problem fixed in singleton class

Multithreaded environment problem

Problem with Singleton Object in a multithreaded environment

Multithreaded environment problem – Fix

Multithreaded issue fixed for a singleton at the method level
Multithreaded issue fix for singleton object by double-checking locking mechanism
Avoid half-baked singleton instances in a multithreaded environment

Multiple Classloader problems & Fix

Multiple classloader issues in singleton object creation

Other robust ways to create a singleton

Static Holder Pattern

Static holder pattern to create the singleton

Singleton using Enum

Leveraging ENUM to create singleton classes.
Check out This StackOverflow link for more descriptive discussion!

Garbage Collection issue and fix

A very important aspect regarding garbage collection of Singleton objects

Here is the GitHub link with the example code – https://github.com/webfuse2017/design-pattern-demo

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