Chain of responsibility look alike but choose handler at runtime

Question

Currently I have an structure of PopUps and I've been thinking to use Chain of Responsibility pattern, but the difference is a popup can back to previous one PopUp and also can go to any other PopUp. I've been thinking to use chain of responsibility, but I think maybe is not the Ideal once chain of responsibility only goes forward.

Can you help me in this case? Which should be the best pattern? I thought something like a layer structure or something like.

E.g.:

Answer 1

The chain of responsibility when executed does not know which element in the chain will do the processing. It is aways executed from the start. In your particular case you know where in the chain you stand when previous element , or next element is selected. In my opinion what you need is structure that has qualities of:

1. Double link list - in Java that will be LinkedList.
2. A good abstraction of a PopUp

You may want to create a structure that can list the elements, so that you can potentialy jump and not need to go the middle element when navigating.

Answer 2

Try to avoid unnecessary complexity. Any ordered collection (e.g. array) will allow you to go both forward and backward. The next question would be what to store in the collection to represent the 'pop ups.' Good luck!

Answer 3

That's too much responsibility for a simple pop-up: not only it has to present some data, but also manage it's own presentation and coordinate with siblings. Move all that unnecessary complexity somewhere.

It seems you are trying to build a menu, so just build a menu:

• Simple data-driven menus that communicate through a parent or a controller.
• One container to manage all the children, showing only one child at time.
• Overlay container, to put menus above everything else, perhaps with mask.