Super-simple example of C# observer/observable with delegates

The observer pattern is usually implemented with events.

Here's an example:

using System;

class Observable
{
    public event EventHandler SomethingHappened;

    public void DoSomething() =>
        SomethingHappened?.Invoke(this, EventArgs.Empty);
}

class Observer
{
    public void HandleEvent(object sender, EventArgs args)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Something happened to " + sender);
    }
}

class Test
{
    static void Main()
    {
        Observable observable = new Observable();
        Observer observer = new Observer();
        observable.SomethingHappened += observer.HandleEvent;

        observable.DoSomething();
    }
}

See the linked article for a lot more detail.

Note that the above example uses C# 6 null-conditional operator to implement DoSomething safely to handle cases where SomethingHappened has not been subscribed to, and is therefore null. If you're using an older version of C#, you'd need code like this:

public void DoSomething()
{
    var handler = SomethingHappened;
    if (handler != null)
    {
        handler(this, EventArgs.Empty);
    }
}

Here's a simple example:

public class ObservableClass
{
    private Int32 _Value;

    public Int32 Value
    {
        get { return _Value; }
        set
        {
            if (_Value != value)
            {
                _Value = value;
                OnValueChanged();
            }
        }
    }

    public event EventHandler ValueChanged;

    protected void OnValueChanged()
    {
        if (ValueChanged != null)
            ValueChanged(this, EventArgs.Empty);
    }
}

public class ObserverClass
{
    public ObserverClass(ObservableClass observable)
    {
        observable.ValueChanged += TheValueChanged;
    }

    private void TheValueChanged(Object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Console.Out.WriteLine("Value changed to " +
            ((ObservableClass)sender).Value);
    }
}

public class Program
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        ObservableClass observable = new ObservableClass();
        ObserverClass observer = new ObserverClass(observable);
        observable.Value = 10;
    }
}

Note:

• This violates a rule in that I don't unhook the observer from the observable, this is perhaps good enough for this simple example, but make sure you don't keep observers hanging off of your events like that. A way to handle this would be to make ObserverClass IDisposable, and let the .Dispose method do the opposite of the code in the constructor
• No error-checking performed, at least a null-check should be done in the constructor of the ObserverClass

I've tied together a couple of the great examples above (thank you as always to Mr. Skeet and Mr. Karlsen) to include a couple of different Observables and utilized an interface to keep track of them in the Observer and allowed the Observer to to "observe" any number of Observables via an internal list:

namespace ObservablePattern
{
    using System;
    using System.Collections.Generic;

    internal static class Program
    {
        private static void Main()
        {
            var observable = new Observable();
            var anotherObservable = new AnotherObservable();

            using (IObserver observer = new Observer(observable))
            {
                observable.DoSomething();
                observer.Add(anotherObservable);
                anotherObservable.DoSomething();
            }

            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }

    internal interface IObservable
    {
        event EventHandler SomethingHappened;
    }

    internal sealed class Observable : IObservable
    {
        public event EventHandler SomethingHappened;

        public void DoSomething()
        {
            var handler = this.SomethingHappened;

            Console.WriteLine("About to do something.");
            if (handler != null)
            {
                handler(this, EventArgs.Empty);
            }
        }
    }

    internal sealed class AnotherObservable : IObservable
    {
        public event EventHandler SomethingHappened;

        public void DoSomething()
        {
            var handler = this.SomethingHappened;

            Console.WriteLine("About to do something different.");
            if (handler != null)
            {
                handler(this, EventArgs.Empty);
            }
        }
    }

    internal interface IObserver : IDisposable
    {
        void Add(IObservable observable);

        void Remove(IObservable observable);
    }

    internal sealed class Observer : IObserver
    {
        private readonly Lazy<IList<IObservable>> observables =
            new Lazy<IList<IObservable>>(() => new List<IObservable>());

        public Observer()
        {
        }

        public Observer(IObservable observable) : this()
        {
            this.Add(observable);
        }

        public void Add(IObservable observable)
        {
            if (observable == null)
            {
                return;
            }

            lock (this.observables)
            {
                this.observables.Value.Add(observable);
                observable.SomethingHappened += HandleEvent;
            }
        }

        public void Remove(IObservable observable)
        {
            if (observable == null)
            {
                return;
            }

            lock (this.observables)
            {
                observable.SomethingHappened -= HandleEvent;
                this.observables.Value.Remove(observable);
            }
        }

        public void Dispose()
        {
            for (var i = this.observables.Value.Count - 1; i >= 0; i--)
            {
                this.Remove(this.observables.Value[i]);
            }
        }

        private static void HandleEvent(object sender, EventArgs args)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Something happened to " + sender);
        }
    }
}