Effective Java, 3rd Edition

Chapter 2. Creating and Destroying Objects

THIS chapter concerns creating and destroying objects: when and how to create them, when and how to avoid creating them, how to ensure they are destroyed in a timely manner, and how to manage any cleanup actions that must precede their destruction.

Item 1: Consider static factory methods instead of constructors

The traditional way for a class to allow a client to obtain an instance is to provide a public constructor. There is another technique that should be a part of every programmer’s toolkit. A class can provide a public static factory method, which is simply a static method that returns an instance of the class. Here’s a simple example from Boolean (the boxed primitive class for boolean). This method ...