A singleton refactoring

Here's a refactoring I often teach. It's particularly applicable if you're wanting to refactor legacy code. I'll show it in C++ in honour of the excellent developers at Promethean.

I'll start with a typical Singleton:

class singleton
{
public:
    static singleton & instance();
    void f(int value);
    int g(const std::string & path);
private:
    singleton();
    ~singleton();
};

Together with typical piece of client client code that I'm wanting to unit-test:

int client::eg1()
{
    stuff();
    more_stuff();
    int r = singleton::instance().g("Hello world");
    return yet_more_stuff(r);
}

My problem is that singleton leads to one or more external dependencies I'd like my unit-tests to bypass. My first step is to create an interface for the singleton:

class singleton_interface
{
public:
    virtual void f(int value) = 0;
    virtual int g(const std::string & path) = 0;
    ...
};

And then make singleton implement the interface. (The saving grace of singleton is that its methods are at least instance methods.)

class singleton : public singleton_interface
{
public:
    static singleton & instance();
    void f(int value);
    int g(const std::string & path);
private:
    singleton();
    ~singleton();
};

Now I can overload eg1 as follows:

int client::eg1(singleton_interface & instance)
{
    stuff();
    more_stuff();
    int r = instance.g("Hello world");
    return yet_more_stuff(r);
}

int client::eg1()
{
    return eg1(singleton::instance());
}

And finally, I can create singleton_interface sub-classes and use them in my unit-tests:

struct my_mock_singleton : singleton_interface
{
    explicit my_mock_singleton(int g_result) 
        : g_result(g_result) 
    {
    }
    void f(int value) 
    {
    }
    int g(const std::string & s) 
    { 
        return g_result; 
    }
    int g_result;
};

void test_client_eg1_hitch_hiker_is_42()
{
    assert(42 == client().eg1(my_mock_singleton(6*9)));
}