A cairo_pattern_t represents a source when drawing onto a surface. There are different subtypes of cairo_pattern_t, for different types of sources; for example, cairo_pattern_create_rgb() creates a pattern for a solid opaque color.

Other than various cairo_pattern_create_type() functions, some of the pattern types can be implicitly created using various cairo_set_source_type() functions; for example cairo_set_source_rgb().

The type of a pattern can be queried with cairo_pattern_get_type().

Memory management of cairo_pattern_t is done with cairo_pattern_reference() and cairo_pattern_destroy().