Interface (computing)

In computing, an interface is a shared boundary across which two or more separate components of a computer system exchange information. The exchange can be between software, computer hardware, peripheral devices, humans, and combinations of these. Some computer hardware devices, such as a touchscreen, can both send and receive data through the interface, while others such as a mouse or microphone may only provide an interface to send data to a given system.

A software interface may refer to a wide range of different types of interfaces at different "levels". For example, an operating system may interface with pieces of hardware. Applications or programs running on the operating system may need to interact via data streams, filters, and pipelines. In object oriented programs, objects within an application may need to interact via methods.

A key principle of design is to prohibit access to all resources by default, allowing access only through well-defined entry points, i.e., interfaces. Software interfaces provide access to computer resources (such as memory, CPU, storage, etc.) of the underlying computer system; direct access (i.e., not through well-designed interfaces) to such resources by software can have major ramifications—sometimes disastrous ones—for functionality and stability. An interface called "Stack" might define two methods: push() and pop(). It can be implemented in different ways, for example, FastStack and GenericStack—the first being fast, working with a data structure of fixed size, and the second using a data structure that can be resized, but at the cost of somewhat lower speed.

Though interfaces can contain many methods, they may contain only one or even none at all. For example, the Java language defines the interface BufferedReader, PipedReader, and IEEE 100 - The Authoritative Dictionary Of IEEE Standards Terms. NYC, NY, USA: IEEE Press. 2000. pp. 574–575. ISBN 9780738126012.

1 2 Govindarajalu, B. (2008). "3.15 Peripheral Interfaces and Controllers - OG". IBM PC And Clones: Hardware, Troubleshooting And Maintenance. Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Co. Ltd. pp. 142–144. ISBN 9780070483118. Retrieved 15 June 2018.

↑ Bill Venners (2005-06-06). "Leading-Edge Java: Design Principles from Design Patterns: Program to an interface, not an implementation - A Conversation with Erich Gamma, Part III". artima developer. Archived from the original on 2011-08-05. Retrieved 2011-08-03. Once you depend on interfaces only, you're decoupled from the implementation. That means the implementation can vary, and that is a healthy dependency relationship. For example, for testing purposes you can replace a heavy database implementation with a lighter-weight mock implementation. Fortunately, with today's refactoring support you no longer have to come up with an interface up front. You can distill an interface from a concrete class once you have the full insights into a problem. The intended interface is just one 'extract interface' refactoring away. ...

↑ "Interfaces". The Java Tutorials. Oracle. Archived from the original on 2012-05-26. Retrieved 2012-05-01.

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