Effective Java™: Programming Language Guide

Chapter 2. Creating and Destroying Objects

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

Item 1: Consider providing static factory methods instead of constructors

The normal way for a class to allow a client to obtain an instance is to provide a public constructor. There is another, less widely known technique that should also 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 the class Boolean ...