The YorkU Parking System was developed as part of a course project focused on applying software design concepts &  patterns to solve real-world problems. I selected parking management at York University as the use case to simulate a practical system with layered complexity.

The backend, written in Java, was carefully structured to incorporate six key design patterns, each chosen to address specific architectural challenges:

• Singleton Pattern: Ensured a single instance of the central parking manager for consistent data handling across the application.

• Factory Method Pattern: Dynamically created different types of parking spots (e.g., regular, accessible, electric) based on input data.

• Builder Pattern: Simplified the construction of complex parking ticket and payment objects with multiple configurable parameters.

• Strategy Pattern: Enabled interchangeable payment processing strategies (e.g., credit, prepaid, on-campus card).

• Visitor Pattern: Separated operations from data structures, allowing actions like generating reports or validating spot rules without modifying the parking objects.

• Composite Pattern: Modeled hierarchical parking lot structures, where each lot contains subcomponents (zones, rows, spots), enabling uniform treatment of individual and grouped elements.

The frontend was built with JavaFX, offering an interactive UI, while CSV files simulated persistent storage. Maven was used for dependency and project management.

This project gave me a deep, hands-on understanding of when and how to apply design patterns to build scalable, maintainable software systems. It served as a key milestone in transitioning from theoretical knowledge to real-world software engineering practice.