April 2004
Intermediate to advanced
520 pages
10h 10m
English
This pattern was previously described in GoF95.
As discussed in earlier chapters, both the Factory Method and the Abstract Factory patterns allow a system to be independent of the object creation process. In other words, these patterns enable a client object to create an instance of an appropriate class by invoking a designated method without having to specify the exact concrete class to be instantiated. While addressing the same problem as the Factory Method and Abstract Factory patterns, the Prototype pattern offers a different, more flexible way of achieveing the same result.
Other uses of the Prototype pattern include: