How The Decorator Pattern Saved My Day

A real-world Java refactoring story where an inheritance-based HyperlinkListener hierarchy proved inflexible when migrating from Swing JEditorPane to JavaFX WebView. The inheritance approach mixed responsibilities, making it impossible to selectively reuse behaviors. Applying the decorator pattern solved this by giving each behavior (logging, browser opening, service request handling) its own class, then composing them at the call site. The result is more readable, testable, and change-ready code that upholds the Single Responsibility Principle.