Visual Basic Design Patterns: VB 6.0 and VB.NET

Chapter 15. The Adapter Pattern

The Adapter pattern is used to convert the programming interface of one class into that of another. We use adapters whenever we want unrelated classes to work together in a single program. The concept of an adapter is thus pretty simple: We write a class that has the desired interface and then make it communicate with the class that has a different interface.

There are two ways to do this: by inheritance and by object composition. In the first case, we derive a new class from the nonconforming one and add the methods we need to make the new derived class match the desired interface. The other way is to include the original class inside the new one and create the methods to translate calls within the new class. These ...