Factory Methods - Intro
7 September 2008This post lists some facts about factory methods.
Factory methods are static methods that return an instance of the native class. Some examples from JDK include :
LogManager.getLogManager
Pattern.compile
Collections.unmodifiableCollection, Collections.synchronizeCollection Calendar.getInstance
Factory methods do not have names like constructors and do not need to create a new object upon each invocation. Objects can be cached and reused, if necessary. Factory methods can return a subtype of their return type. They can return an object whose implementation class is unknown to the caller. It is a very valuable and widely used feature in many frameworks which use interfaces as the return type of static factory methods.
Common names for factory methods include getInstance and valueOf.
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