Editing Adapter pattern (section)

{{Short description|Design pattern in computer programming}}
{{excessive examples|date=January 2011}}
In [[software engineering]], the '''adapter pattern''' is a [[software design pattern]] (also known as [[Wrapper function|wrapper]], an alternative naming shared with the [[decorator pattern]]) that allows the [[interface (computer science)|interface]] of an existing [[class (computer science)|class]] to be used as another interface.<ref name="HeadFirst"/> It is often used to make existing classes work with others without modifying their [[source code]].

An example is an adapter that converts the interface of a [[Document Object Model]] of an [[XML]] document into a tree structure that can be displayed.