Design patterns for humans

# 🔗 Chain of Responsibility

Real world example

For example, you have three payment methods (A, B and C) setup in your account; each having a different amount in it. A has 100 USD, B has 300 USD and C having 1000 USD and the preference for payments is chosen as A then B then C. You try to purchase something that is worth 210 USD. Using Chain of Responsibility, first of all account A will be checked if it can make the purchase, if yes purchase will be made and the chain will be broken. If not, request will move forward to account B checking for amount if yes chain will be broken otherwise the request will keep forwarding till it finds the suitable handler. Here A, B and C are links of the chain and the whole phenomenon is Chain of Responsibility.

In plain words

It helps building a chain of objects. Request enters from one end and keeps going from object to object till it finds the suitable handler.

Wikipedia says

In object-oriented design, the chain-of-responsibility pattern is a design pattern consisting of a source of command objects and a series of processing objects. Each processing object contains logic that defines the types of command objects that it can handle; the rest are passed to the next processing object in the chain.

Programmatic Example

Translating our account example above. First of all we have a base account having the logic for chaining the accounts together and some accounts

abstract class Account
{
    protected $successor;
    protected $balance;

    public function setNext(Account $account)
    {
        $this->successor = $account;
    }

    public function pay(float $amountToPay)
    {
        if ($this->canPay($amountToPay)) {
            echo sprintf('Paid %s using %s' . PHP_EOL, $amountToPay, get_called_class());
        } elseif ($this->successor) {
            echo sprintf('Cannot pay using %s. Proceeding ..' . PHP_EOL, get_called_class());
            $this->successor->pay($amountToPay);
        } else {
            throw new Exception('None of the accounts have enough balance');
        }
    }

    public function canPay($amount): bool
    {
        return $this->balance >= $amount;
    }
}

class Bank extends Account
{
    protected $balance;

    public function __construct(float $balance)
    {
        $this->balance = $balance;
    }
}

class Paypal extends Account
{
    protected $balance;

    public function __construct(float $balance)
    {
        $this->balance = $balance;
    }
}

class Bitcoin extends Account
{
    protected $balance;

    public function __construct(float $balance)
    {
        $this->balance = $balance;
    }
}

Now let's prepare the chain using the links defined above (i.e. Bank, Paypal, Bitcoin)

// Let's prepare a chain like below
//      $bank->$paypal->$bitcoin
//
// First priority bank
//      If bank can't pay then paypal
//      If paypal can't pay then bit coin

$bank = new Bank(100);          // Bank with balance 100
$paypal = new Paypal(200);      // Paypal with balance 200
$bitcoin = new Bitcoin(300);    // Bitcoin with balance 300

$bank->setNext($paypal);
$paypal->setNext($bitcoin);

// Let's try to pay using the first priority i.e. bank
$bank->pay(259);

// Output will be
// ==============
// Cannot pay using bank. Proceeding ..
// Cannot pay using paypal. Proceeding ..:
// Paid 259 using Bitcoin!

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