monitoring an object changes

[cloud_strife]

Hi all,:)
I am developing a standard Java application.
I have a class representing a quite complex data structure with some private members and corresponding setters/getters.
I wish to create a method (in another class) which is called anytime some attribute of my data structure class changes.
I read something about Observer model, do you think I should use it?
Is it possible to use change listeners?:confused:
Is it possible to avoid to put an istruction like "notifyobserver()" at the end of every setter methods in order to call the "update" method?
Thank you all.:)
Bye

[Fubarable]

Yes, the observable pattern might work quite well for you here. Myself, I'm not a big fan of Java's hard-coded implementation of this pattern since it requires you to subclass Observable. I'd much rather have Observable be an interface, and so I usually write my own interfaces for this pattern.

[OrangeDog]

The only alternative to having some kind of notifyObserver() is to periodically poll the values you are looking at. However, in general this wastes lots of CPU time and you have no guarantees of spotting every change.

[toadaly]

Hi all,:)
I read something about Observer model, do you think I should use it?

Yes. This is an ideal situation for it.

Is it possible to use change listeners?:confused:

Yes, but why? It would seem to make more sense to define your own listener interface. It's just 1 more class.

Is it possible to avoid to put an istruction like "notifyobserver()" at the end of every setter methods in order to call the "update" method?

If there are so many setter methods that this is a burden, then your design is probably not sufficiently encapsulated. An ideal design has no getter or setter methods at all. In practice they are needed, but use them sparingly. If there is no good reason to expose your member variables, then don't.

...but, if you're sitution is such that you need such exposure (for example, a class that represents data stored in a relational database) and it's a burden, you could use aspects to accomplish this. I haven't used it, but you might look into AspectJ.