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Singleton

The Java Singleton Pattern is a Creational Design Pattern that restricts the instantiation of a class to ensure only one instance exists, providing a global access point. Various implementation methods include Eager Initialization, Static Block Initialization, Lazy Initialization, Thread Safe Singleton, Bill Pugh Singleton Implementation, and Enum Singleton, each with its own advantages and drawbacks. The document also discusses the challenges of using reflection to break the singleton pattern and suggests best practices for implementation.

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Suresh
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14 views8 pages

Singleton

The Java Singleton Pattern is a Creational Design Pattern that restricts the instantiation of a class to ensure only one instance exists, providing a global access point. Various implementation methods include Eager Initialization, Static Block Initialization, Lazy Initialization, Thread Safe Singleton, Bill Pugh Singleton Implementation, and Enum Singleton, each with its own advantages and drawbacks. The document also discusses the challenges of using reflection to break the singleton pattern and suggests best practices for implementation.

Uploaded by

Suresh
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Java Singleton Pattern is one of the Gangs of Four Design patterns and comes

in the Creational Design Pattern category.


From the definition, it seems to be a very simple design pattern but when it
comes to implementation, it comes with a lot of implementation concerns.
The implementation of Java Singleton pattern has always been a controversial
topic among developers. Here we will learn about Singleton design pattern
principles, different ways to implement the Singleton design pattern and some
of the best practices for its usage.

Singleton Pattern
 Singleton pattern restricts the instantiation of a class and ensures that only
one instance of the class exists in the java virtual machine.
 The singleton class must provide a global access point to get the instance of
the class.
 Singleton pattern is used for logging, drivers objects, caching and thread pool.
 Singleton design pattern is also used in other design patterns like Abstract
Factory, Builder, Prototype, Facade etc.
 Singleton design pattern is used in core java classes also, for
example java.lang.Runtime, java.awt.Desktop.

Java Singleton Pattern Implementation


To implement a Singleton pattern, we have different approaches but all of
them have the following common concepts.
 Private constructor to restrict instantiation of the class from other classes.
 Private static variable of the same class that is the only instance of the class.
 Public static method that returns the instance of the class, this is the global
access point for outer world to get the instance of the singleton class.

In further sections, we will learn different approaches of Singleton pattern


implementation and design concerns with the implementation.

1. Eager initialization
2. Static block initialization
3. Lazy Initialization
4. Thread Safe Singleton
5. Bill Pugh Singleton Implementation
6. Using Reflection to destroy Singleton Pattern
7. Enum Singleton

1. Eager initialization

In eager initialization, the instance of Singleton Class is created at the time of


class loading, this is the easiest method to create a singleton class but it has a
drawback that instance is created even though client application might not be
using it.
Here is the implementation of the static initialization singleton class.

public class EagerInitializedSingleton {

private static final EagerInitializedSingleton instance =


new EagerInitializedSingleton();

//private constructor to avoid client applications to use


constructor
private EagerInitializedSingleton(){}

public static EagerInitializedSingleton getInstance(){


return instance;
}
}
If your singleton class is not using a lot of resources, this is the approach to
use. But in most of the scenarios, Singleton classes are created for resources
such as File System, Database connections, etc. We should avoid the
instantiation until unless client calls the getInstance method. Also, this method
doesn’t provide any options for exception handling.

2. Static block initialization

Static block initialization implementation is similar to eager initialization,


except that instance of class is created in the static block that provides option
for exception handling.

public class StaticBlockSingleton {

private static StaticBlockSingleton instance;

private StaticBlockSingleton(){}

//static block initialization for exception handling


static{
try{
instance = new StaticBlockSingleton();
}catch(Exception e){
throw new RuntimeException("Exception occured in
creating singleton instance");
}
}

public static StaticBlockSingleton getInstance(){


return instance;
}
}

Both eager initialization and static block initialization creates the instance even
before it’s being used and that is not the best practice to use. So in further
sections, we will learn how to create a Singleton class that supports lazy
initialization.
Read: Java static

3. Lazy Initialization
Lazy initialization method to implement Singleton pattern creates the instance
in the global access method. Here is the sample code for creating Singleton
class with this approach.

public class LazyInitializedSingleton {

private static LazyInitializedSingleton instance;

private LazyInitializedSingleton(){}

public static LazyInitializedSingleton getInstance(){


if(instance == null){
instance = new LazyInitializedSingleton();
}
return instance;
}
}

The above implementation works fine in case of the single-threaded


environment but when it comes to multithreaded systems, it can cause issues
if multiple threads are inside the if condition at the same time. It will destroy
the singleton pattern and both threads will get the different instances of the
singleton class. In next section, we will see different ways to create a thread-
safe singleton class.

4. Thread Safe Singleton

The easier way to create a thread-safe singleton class is to make the global
access method synchronized, so that only one thread can execute this
method at a time. General implementation of this approach is like the below
class.

package com.journaldev.singleton;

public class ThreadSafeSingleton {

private static ThreadSafeSingleton instance;

private ThreadSafeSingleton(){}
public static synchronized ThreadSafeSingleton
getInstance(){
if(instance == null){
instance = new ThreadSafeSingleton();
}
return instance;
}

Above implementation works fine and provides thread-safety but it reduces


the performance because of the cost associated with the synchronized
method, although we need it only for the first few threads who might create
the separate instances (Read: Java Synchronization). To avoid this extra
overhead every time, double checked locking principle is used. In this
approach, the synchronized block is used inside the if condition with an
additional check to ensure that only one instance of a singleton class is
created.
The following code snippet provides the double-checked locking
implementation.

public static ThreadSafeSingleton


getInstanceUsingDoubleLocking(){
if(instance == null){
synchronized (ThreadSafeSingleton.class) {
if(instance == null){
instance = new ThreadSafeSingleton();
}
}
}
return instance;
}

Read: Thread Safe Singleton Class

5. Bill Pugh Singleton Implementation

Prior to Java 5, java memory model had a lot of issues and the above
approaches used to fail in certain scenarios where too many threads try to get
the instance of the Singleton class simultaneously. So Bill Pugh came up with
a different approach to create the Singleton class using an inner static helper
class. The Bill Pugh Singleton implementation goes like this;

package com.journaldev.singleton;

public class BillPughSingleton {

private BillPughSingleton(){}

private static class SingletonHelper{


private static final BillPughSingleton INSTANCE = new
BillPughSingleton();
}

public static BillPughSingleton getInstance(){


return SingletonHelper.INSTANCE;
}
}
Notice the private inner static class that contains the instance of the singleton
class. When the singleton class is loaded, SingletonHelper class is not loaded
into memory and only when someone calls the getInstance method, this class
gets loaded and creates the Singleton class instance.
This is the most widely used approach for Singleton class as it doesn’t require
synchronization. I am using this approach in many of my projects and it’s easy
to understand and implement also.
Read: Java Nested Classes

6. Using Reflection to destroy Singleton Pattern

Reflection can be used to destroy all the above singleton implementation


approaches. Let’s see this with an example class.

package com.journaldev.singleton;

import java.lang.reflect.Constructor;

public class ReflectionSingletonTest {

public static void main(String[] args) {


EagerInitializedSingleton instanceOne =
EagerInitializedSingleton.getInstance();
EagerInitializedSingleton instanceTwo = null;
try {
Constructor[] constructors =
EagerInitializedSingleton.class.getDeclaredConstructors();
for (Constructor constructor : constructors) {
//Below code will destroy the singleton pattern
constructor.setAccessible(true);
instanceTwo = (EagerInitializedSingleton)
constructor.newInstance();
break;
}
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
System.out.println(instanceOne.hashCode());
System.out.println(instanceTwo.hashCode());
}

When you run the above test class, you will notice that hashCode of both the
instances is not same that destroys the singleton pattern. Reflection is very
powerful and used in a lot of frameworks like Spring and Hibernate, do check
out Java Reflection Tutorial.

7. Enum Singleton

To overcome this situation with Reflection, Joshua Bloch suggests the use of
Enum to implement Singleton design pattern as Java ensures that any enum
value is instantiated only once in a Java program. Since Java Enum values
are globally accessible, so is the singleton. The drawback is that the enum
type is somewhat inflexible; for example, it does not allow lazy initialization.

package com.journaldev.singleton;

public enum EnumSingleton {

INSTANCE;

public static void doSomething(){


//do something
}
}

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