gof-proxy

One-line summary

Provide a surrogate or placeholder for another object to control access to it — without the client knowing it's not talking directly to the real object.

When to use this skill

• The real object is expensive to create and should be deferred until actually used (Virtual Proxy — image loading, lazy initialization of heavy resources).
• The real object lives in a different process / on a different machine and the client interface should look local (Remote Proxy — RMI, gRPC stubs, RPC clients).
• Access to the real object should be checked against permissions or rate limits (Protection Proxy).
• The real object is hard to mock for tests, and a stand-in makes testing easier.

When NOT to use this skill

• You want to add behavior to the wrapped object — that's gof-decorator, not Proxy. The structural shape is the same but the intent differs.
• You want to change the interface — that's gof-adapter.
• Lazy initialization of a simple field — most languages have lazy delegates (by lazy in Kotlin, lazy in C#) that handle it without a proxy class.

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