Singleton class having a Static declaration in its method which returns its instance

[Ravi Kiran Va]

We are having some Singleton classes in our Application which will get all the static maintaince stored in database.

Any class which require this data , just calls this calls by

MaintainceCacheData filewrapper = MaintainceCacheData.getInstance();

And inside the MaintainceCacheData class which is a singleton class has a static method in it as shown :

public  static synchronized MaintainceCacheData getInstance() {
	       if (MaintainceCacheinstance == null) {
	    	   MaintainceCacheData = new MaintainceCacheData();
	       }
	        return MaintainceCacheinstance;
	    }

My question is why is it necessary to have a Method as static declaration for a singleton class whcih returns its instance .

Please share your knowledge .

Thanks for reading .

[Martin Vanyavchich]

I'm guessing, given the factory like implementation, that this singleton class has a private constructor. If this method wasn't static there would be no way of instatiating this class (outside of it). That would make virtualy it unusabe, wouldn't it?

[Ravi Kiran Va]

Ya Martin , this has a private constructor .

I got my answer on to the above question .

If you dont mind i got an another question , why is it necessary to have a private constructor inside a Singleton class ??

[Martin Vanyavchich]

As the name implies, you wish to have only one instance of the object at the one time when you implement a class as a Singleton. You want to have control over how many instances there are (just one ). You achieve that by making instantiation controlled by the class itself, thus making all constructors private and a static method that instantiates a new object only of there are none already present. Probably overriding clone() will help too. Some consider Singleton an anti-pattern ...

[Campbell Ritchie]

You could also use a one-member enum.

[Ravi Kiran Va]

As the name implies, you wish to have only one instance of the object at the one time when you implement a class as a Singleton.

Martin , Thanks very much for the explanation . Actually My question is "Why we need to have only one instance for a Singleton class"??
Why cant we leave this with a public constructor , so that if whenever any class requires this Object's data just instainate with new keyword and call a method on it

For example

In another class :

MaintainceCacheData cachedata = new MaintainceCacheData();
cachedata.getStaticdata();

what is the problem with this ??

[Martin Vanyavchich]

I really can't answer that. Someone once decided that your MaintainceCacheData class should be a singleton and implemented it that way. You will have to got through code, to determine what will be the results of making that class instantiable. Judging by the name it's some sort of chache. If that is so it probably makes sense that there is only one.

[Ravi Kiran Va]

Thanks Martin for the response .

Can anybody please answer this question in general terms of a Singleton class (not with respect to my class) i mean any Singleton classs .

Thanks .

[Paul Sturrock]

Not sure I understand your question. The reason you would use a singleton is because you've made a design decision that there must be only one instance of this class in your application. Why that design decision was made is not something I can say. It presumably has some feature (probably some data) where more than one version would be invalid? But I'd ask the person who wrote the application. They are in a far better possition than us to answer why they did what they did.

[Ravi Kiran Va]

Paul thanks for your time .

This is my question exactly .

In what cases do we need to have only one instance of aclass in a application.

Please let me know .

Thanks in advance .

[David Newton]

Ravi Kiran V wrote:Actually My question is "Why we need to have only one instance for a Singleton class"??

Because if you had more than one it wouldn't be a singleton.

Why cant we leave this with a public constructor , so that if whenever any class requires this Object's data just instainate with new keyword and call a method on it

For example

In another class :

MaintainceCacheData cachedata = new MaintainceCacheData();
cachedata.getStaticdata();

what is the problem with this ??

Potentially nothing--depends on how it's implemented.

Just because singletons are used doesn't mean they're a good idea (and I'd argue that in most cases, they're not, at least as typically done in Java). They making testing more irritating than necessary, but that has more to do with the usual way of using them.

[Vinoth Kumar Kannan]

Ravi, see if this helps....how would you instantiate the java.util.Calendar class - which we all regularly use?!

Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();

Like this,right?

The Java designers decided to make Calendar class a singleton class, because all you need is some info/manipulation on date/time, for that why do you need more than 1 object?
You get me?

Calendar cal1 = new Calendar();
Calendar cal2 = new Calendar();

Do you really need 2 objects to manipulate on date/time??You can ofcourse have 2, but it is just a overhead!

Why have many when one would do?(I'm talking about Objects not Wives.. )

[Paul Clapham]

Vinoth Kumar Kannan wrote:Ravi, see if this helps....how would you instantiate the java.util.Calendar class - which we all regularly use?!

Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();

Like this,right?

The Java designers decided to make Calendar class a singleton class...

No, they didn't. That's an example of the Factory pattern, where Calendar.getInstance() returns a new instance of some subclass of Calendar which is the right one for your environment. Typically it's GregorianCalendar but it could be something else.

And it's perfectly reasonable to have two Calendar objects. They could contain different information, for example.

[Rob Spoor]

If you want singletons, check out java.lang.Runtime, java.awt.SystemTray or java.awt.GraphicsEnvironment.

[Vinoth Kumar Kannan]

Paul Clapham wrote:
And it's perfectly reasonable to have two Calendar objects. They could contain different information, for example.

Is it possible to create 2 instances of a Calendar?? I've never seen such code! How to create 2 of them? Enlighten me please.

[Paul Clapham]

Vinoth Kumar Kannan wrote:

Paul Clapham wrote:
And it's perfectly reasonable to have two Calendar objects. They could contain different information, for example.

Is it possible to create 2 instances of a Calendar?? I've never seen such code! How to create 2 of them? Enlighten me please.

It's not terribly difficult...

Calendar calendar1 = Calendar.getInstance();
Calendar calendar2 = Calendar.getInstance();

And there you have it. Two Calendar instances.

[Ravi Kiran Va]

Thank you i finally got the answer which has been a query for me since long time .

Thank you each one for your time .

[Pat Farrell]

There are a number of subtle technical problems related to singletons and multi-threading in the very early initialization of the class. For a detailed explaination, and coding styles to fix it, see
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-dcl.html

I believe that the Singleton pattern is the most missused design pattern in all of Object Oriented Programming. It is widely popular, but should not be.

"Singletons considered harmful" should be the title of any reference to them.

What a singleton really is to the world is a big, glob of public data that greatly increases coupling between modules. It make proper unit tests impossible.

There are much better design patterns that are easy to implement and avoid the problems of the evil singleton pattern.

The Gang of Four got this one wrong.