Visitor Pattern

Real world example

Consider someone visiting Dubai. They just need a way (i.e. visa) to enter Dubai. After arrival, they can come and visit any place in Dubai on their own without having to ask for permission or to do some leg work in order to visit any place here just let them know of a place and they can visit it. Visitor pattern let's you do just that, it helps you add places to visit so that they can visit as much as they can without having to do any legwork.

In plain words

Visitor pattern let's you add further operations to objects without having to modify them.

Wikipedia says

In object-oriented programming and software engineering, the visitor design pattern is a way of separating an algorithm from an object structure on which it operates. A practical result of this separation is the ability to add new operations to existing object structures without modifying those structures. It is one way to follow the open/closed principle.

Programmatic example

Let's take an example of a zoo simulation where we have several different kinds of animals and we have to make them Sound. Let's translate this using visitor pattern

We have our implementations for the animals

class Monkey {
    shout() {
        console.log('Ooh oo aa aa!')
    }

    accept(operation) {
        operation.visitMonkey(this)
    }
}

class Lion {
    roar() {
        console.log('Roaaar!')
    }
    
    accept(operation) {
        operation.visitLion(this)
    }
}

class Dolphin {
    speak() {
        console.log('Tuut tuttu tuutt!')
    }
    
    accept(operation) {
        operation.visitDolphin(this)
    }
}

Let's implement our visitor

const speak = {
    visitMonkey(monkey){
        monkey.shout()
    },
    visitLion(lion){
        lion.roar()
    },
    visitDolphin(dolphin){
        dolphin.speak()
    }
}

And then it can be used as

const monkey = new Monkey()
const lion = new Lion()
const dolphin = new Dolphin()

monkey.accept(speak)    // Ooh oo aa aa!    
lion.accept(speak)      // Roaaar!
dolphin.accept(speak)   // Tuut tutt tuutt!

We could have done this simply by having a inheritance hierarchy for the animals but then we would have to modify the animals whenever we would have to add new actions to animals. But now we will not have to change them. For example, let's say we are asked to add the jump behavior to the animals, we can simply add that by creating a new visitor i.e.

const jump = {
    visitMonkey(monkey) {
        console.log('Jumped 20 feet high! on to the tree!')
    },
    visitLion(lion) {
        console.log('Jumped 7 feet! Back on the ground!')
    },
    visitDolphin(dolphin) {
        console.log('Walked on water a little and disappeared')
    }
}

And for the usage

monkey.accept(speak)   // Ooh oo aa aa!
monkey.accept(jump)    // Jumped 20 feet high! on to the tree!

lion.accept(speak)     // Roaaar!
lion.accept(jump)      // Jumped 7 feet! Back on the ground! 

dolphin.accept(speak)  // Tuut tutt tuutt! 
dolphin.accept(jump)   // Walked on water a little and disappeared