Difference between State pattern and Strategy pattern
design-patterns, oop, state-pattern, strategy-pattern
Solution
The state and strategy patterns are similar in the sense that both of them encapsulate behavior in separate objects and use composition to delegate to the composed object to implement the behavior and both of them provide the flexibility to change the behavior dynamically by changing the composed object at run-time. But there are some key differences :
In the state pattern, the client knows nothing about the state objects. State changes happen transparently to the client. The client just calls methods on the context, the context oversees its own state. Because the client is not aware of the state changes, it appears to the client as though the context is instantiated from a different class each time there is a change in behavior due to a state change. The object will appear to change its class as the official definition of the pattern states. The pattern is built around a well-defined series of state transitions. Changing state is key to the pattern's existence.
Even though the strategy pattern provides the flexibility to change behavior by changing the composed strategy object dynamically, mostly there is an appropriate strategy object already set for each context. ie even though the pattern provides a way to change the composed strategy object dynamically, there won't be much of a need for it. Even if it has to be done, it is the client that does the change. The client will call the setter method on the context and pass the new strategy object. Thus behavior changes are NOT transparent to the client and are initiated and controlled by the client. The pattern does not encourage a series of well-defined behavior changes like the state pattern. The client knows about the strategy objects and will usually set the appropriate strategy object in the context while creating it. The client controls what strategy object the context uses, but in the state pattern, the client knows nothing about the state object(s) that the context uses
For additional information pls refer the below link http://myrandomsparks.blogspot.in/2012/05/strategy-vs-state-pattern.html
Problem
Looking at the GoF patterns I find the similarities between State and Stategy pattern rather striking. Both swap out polymorphic classes to modify behavior. Anyone else found the same? What are the exact differences?