layout	title	folder	permalink	pumlid	categories	tags
pattern	Composite	composite	/patterns/composite/	HSf13eCm30NHgy01YFUzZGaM62LEP7-NwvTTT_EaMTLgoqFIst81Cpv4payv5LVk6U9r6CHGwkYaBHy6EztyvUsGqDEsoO2u1NMED-WTvmY5aA3-LT9xcTdR3m00	Structural	Java Gang Of Four Difficulty-Intermediate

Intent

Compose objects into tree structures to represent part-whole hierarchies. Composite lets clients treat individual objects and compositions of objects uniformly.

Applicability

Use the Composite pattern when

• you want to represent part-whole hierarchies of objects
• you want clients to be able to ignore the difference between compositions of objects and individual objects. Clients will treat all objects in the composite structure uniformly

Real world examples

• java.awt.Container and java.awt.Component
• Apache Wicket component tree, see Component and MarkupContainer

Credits

• Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software