The adapter pattern and presenter-first UIs

The adapter pattern provides a technique to bind together the presenter logic and the UI screens of a presenter-first model (and other loosely coupled models) of user interface implementation. An example follows.

An application to double an integer requires a presenter function to perform the doubling on request:

public class Presenter
{
    public IInput Input { get; set; }
    public IOutput Output { get; set; }

    public void PerformDoubling()
    {
        int inputValue = Input.GetValue();
        int result = inputValue * 2;
        Output.SetValue(result);
    }
}

The presenter is using interfaces to access the user interface – which allows presenter unit tests to be built via mocks independent to the development of the UI:

public interface IInput
{
    int GetValue();
}

public interface IOutput
{
    void SetValue(int newValue);
}

Binding the interfaces to a deployed UI can then take the form of UI-specific adapters to the IInput and IOutput interfaces. I.e. for a Window1 class containing input and output accessors (implemented using explicit marshalling as described in this blog entry):

public partial class Window1 : Window
{
    ...

    public String ThreadSafeGetInputValue() ...
    public void ThreadSafeSetOutputValue(String newValue) ...
}

The following two adapters can be used to convert the UI to match the required interface without the need to modify the UI code. (Null and error checking has been excluded below to reduce code footprint:)

public class AdapterIInputWindow1 : IInput
{
    private Window1 Window1 { get; set; }

    public AdapterIInputWindow1(Window1 wrappedWindow)
    {
        Window1 = wrappedWindow;
    }

    // IInput implementation - excluding error checking
    public int GetValue()
    {
        int result = Convert.ToInt32(Window1.ThreadSafeGetInputValue());
        return result;
    }
}


public class AdapterIOutputWindow1 : IOutput
{
    private Window1 Window1 { get; set; }

    public AdapterIOutputWindow1(Window1 wrappedWindow)
    {
        Window1 = wrappedWindow;
    }

    // IOutput implementation - excluding error checking
    public void SetValue(int newValue)
    {
        Window1.ThreadSafeSetOutputValue(newValue.ToString());
    }
}

Finally the UI can initialize its presenter and set the IInput and IOutput interfaces to the appropriate adapters:

public partial class Window1 : Window
{
    private Presenter Presenter { get; set; }

    public Window1()
    {
        InitializeComponent();

        Presenter = new Presenter();
        Presenter.Input = new AdapterIInputWindow1(this);
        Presenter.Output = new AdapterIOutputWindow1(this);
    }


    public void XamlAction(object sender, EventArgs args)
    {
        Presenter.PerformDoubling();
    }
    ...
}