July 2001
Beginner to intermediate
368 pages
6h 52m
English
book
Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design
by Alan Shalloway, James R. Trott
Content preview from Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented DesignBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
Start your free trial
Introducing the Abstract Factory Pattern
According to the Gang of Four, the intent of the Abstract Factory pattern is to “provide an interface for creating families of related or dependent objects without specifying their concrete classes.”[1]
[1] Gamma, E., Helm, R., Johnson, R., Vlissides, J., Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1995, p. 87.
Sometimes, several objects need to be instantiated in a coordinated fashion. For example, when dealing with user interfaces, the system might need to use one set of objects to work on one operating system and another set of objects to work on a different operating system. The Abstract Factory pattern ensures that the system always gets the correct ...