tl;dr The Pipes-and-Filters pattern ...

Problem

Imagine you are building a system that must process or transform a stream of input data. Implementing such a system as a single component may not be feasible for several reasons: the system has to be built by several developers, the global system task decomposes naturally into several processing stages, and the requirements are likely to change.

You therefore plan for future flexibility by exchanging or reordering the processing steps. By incorporating such flexibility, it is possible to build a family of systems using existing processing components. The design of the system--especially the interconnection of processing steps--has to consider the following forces:

Whether a separation into processing steps is feasible strongly depends on the application domain and the problem to be solved. For example, an interactive, event-driven system does not split into sequential stages.

Context

Processing data streams. (TODO: This needs more detail.)

Solution

The Pipes and Filters architectural pattern divides the task of a system into several sequential processing steps. These steps are connected by the data flow through the system-the output data of a step is the input to the subsequent step. Each processing step is implemented by a filter component. A filter consumes and delivers data incrementally--in contrast to consuming all its input before producing any output--to achieve low latency and enable real parallel processing. The input to the system is provided by a data source such as a text file. The output flows into a data sink such as a file, terminal, animation program and so on. The data source, the filters and the data sink are connected sequentially by pipes. Each pipe implements the data flow between adjacent processing steps. The sequence of filters combined by pipes is called a processing pipeline.

Filter components are the processing units of the pipeline. A filter enriches, refines or transforms its input data. It enriches data by computing and adding information, refines data by concentrating or extracting information, and transforms data by delivering the data in some other representation. A concrete filter implementation may combine any of these three basic principles.

The activity of a filter can be triggered by several events:

The first two cases denote so-called passive filters, whereas the last case is an active filter. An active filter starts processing on its own as a separate program or thread. A passive filter component is activated by being called either as a function (pull) or as a procedure (push).

Pipes denote the connections between filters, between the data source and the first filter, and between the last filter and the data sink. If two active components are joined, the pipe synchronizes them. This synchronization is done with a first-in- first-out buffer. If activity is controlled by one of the adjacent filters, the pipe can be implemented by a direct call from the active to the passive component. Direct calls make filter recombination harder, however.

The data source represents the input to the system, and provides a sequence of data values of the same structure or type. Examples of such data sources are a file consisting of lines of text, or a sensor delivering a sequence of numbers. The data source of a pipeline can either actively push the data values to the first processing stage, or passively provide data when the first filter pulls.

The data sink collects the results from the end of the pipeline. Two variants of the data sink are possible. An active data sink pulls results out of the preceding processing stage, while a passive one allows the preceding filter to push or write the results into it.

Implementations

Consequences

A Pipes-and-Filters approach tends to lead to several consequences:

Relationships

The Layers pattern is better suited to systems that require reliable operation, because it is easier to implement error handling than with Pipes and Filters. However, Layers lacks support for the easy recombination and reuse of components that is the key feature of the Pipes and Filter pattern.

Each processing component can often be its own Strategy.

It's relatively easy to see a Pipes and Filters pattern as a Chain of Responsibility, though the intent is somewhat different; in a CoR, the idea is to pass data through the pipe until one of the participants in the Chain acknowledges and handles the request, whereas in a P&F approach, the assumption is that every participant in the pipe wants/needs to see the data, often to manipulate it in some way.

Blackboard systems can be built as Pipes and Filters, where each participant in the decision-making process takes a turn at the data before passing it on to the next one in the chain.

Variations

Variations on Pipes and Filters include...

Last updated: 07 March 2022

Tags: pattern   behavioral   architectural