Dev Cookies

Posted on Apr 12

📝 Day Three: Singleton Design Pattern in Java

🔍 What is the Singleton Design Pattern?

The Singleton Pattern is a creational design pattern that ensures a class has only one instance and provides a global point of access to it.

✅ When Should You Use It?

To manage shared resources like database connections, thread pools, caches, logging, etc.
When you want to restrict object creation to only one instance throughout the application lifecycle.

🧠 Real-World Analogy

Think of the President of a country. There is only one President at any given time. If anyone tries to create another one, it should return the same instance 👑.

🧱 Structure

We’ll cover 4 variations of Singleton in Java:

Basic Singleton (Lazy Initialization)
Thread-Safe Singleton (Synchronized)
Bill Pugh Singleton (Best Practice)
Enum Singleton (Most Robust)

✅ 1. Lazy Initialization (Not Thread-Safe)

public class LazySingleton {
    private static LazySingleton instance;

    private LazySingleton() {} // private constructor

    public static LazySingleton getInstance() {
        if (instance == null) {
            instance = new LazySingleton();
        }
        return instance;
    }
}

❌ Not thread-safe. Two threads may create two instances.

✅ 2. Thread-Safe Singleton (Synchronized)

public class ThreadSafeSingleton {
    private static ThreadSafeSingleton instance;

    private ThreadSafeSingleton() {}

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

✅ Thread-safe, but slower due to synchronization.

✅ 3. Bill Pugh Singleton (Recommended)

public class BillPughSingleton {
    private BillPughSingleton() {}

    private static class Holder {
        private static final BillPughSingleton INSTANCE = new BillPughSingleton();
    }

    public static BillPughSingleton getInstance() {
        return Holder.INSTANCE;
    }
}

✅ Thread-safe, fast, and lazy-loaded. Best practice in most cases.

✅ 4. Enum Singleton (Robust & Safe)

public enum EnumSingleton {
    INSTANCE;

    public void doSomething() {
        System.out.println("Doing something from Enum Singleton");
    }
}

✅ Simplest and safest, handles serialization, reflection, and thread safety.

💻 Client Code

public class SingletonDemo {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        LazySingleton s1 = LazySingleton.getInstance();
        LazySingleton s2 = LazySingleton.getInstance();
        System.out.println("Same LazySingleton? " + (s1 == s2)); // true

        BillPughSingleton b1 = BillPughSingleton.getInstance();
        BillPughSingleton b2 = BillPughSingleton.getInstance();
        System.out.println("Same BillPughSingleton? " + (b1 == b2)); // true

        EnumSingleton.INSTANCE.doSomething();
    }
}

🧪 Output:

Same LazySingleton? true
Same BillPughSingleton? true
Doing something from Enum Singleton

⚙️ UML Diagram (Text Format)

    +--------------------+
    |   SingletonClass   |
    +--------------------+
    | -instance: static  |
    | -constructor()     |
    +--------------------+
    | +getInstance(): SingletonClass |
    +--------------------+

🧑‍🏫 Key Takeaways

Singleton ensures only one instance exists.
Use Bill Pugh or Enum versions in production.
Useful for centralized services like logging, config, DB access.

🚀 Up Next for Day 4: Want to explore Decorator, Strategy, or Adapter?

Let me know your pick, and I’ll keep the clean breakdown + rich Java code style coming!

DEV Community