Observer Pattern in Python

The Observer pattern is a software design pattern in which an object, called the Subject (Observable), manages a list of dependents, called Observers, and notifies them automatically of any internal state changes by calling one of their methods.

The Observer pattern follows the publish/subscribe concept. A subscriber, subscribes to a publisher. The publisher then notifies the subscribers when necessary.

The observer stores state that should be consistent with the subject. The observer only needs to store what is necessary for its own purposes.

A typical place to use the observer pattern is between your application and presentation layers. Your application is the manager of the data and is the single source of truth, and when the data changes, it can update all of the subscribers, that could be part of multiple presentation layers. For example, the score was changed in a televised cricket game, so all the web browser clients, mobile phone applications, leaderboard display on the ground and television graphics overlay, can all now have the updated information synchronized.

Most applications that involve a separation of data into a presentation layer can be broken further down into the Model-View-Controller (MVC) concept.

• Controller : The single source of truth.
• Model : The link or relay between a controller and a view. It may use any of the structural patterns (adapter, bridge, facade, proxy, etc.) at some point.