Design Patterns in 1 minute: Abstract Factory #14
Classification: Creational
The Abstract Factory is a design pattern that allows decoupling the creation of related and/or dependent object families without specifying their concrete classes.
This approach enhances application flexibility and modularity by enabling configurations that define which object types should be instantiated.
The Problem
Creating new objects can cause significant coupling between classes.
Imagine a scenario where you have different object families inheriting from a common interface.
Your use case needs to create objects from a specific family based on a particular business rule.
How can this be done without coupling your use case to the creation of each of these N families?
The Solution
The idea here is to delegate the responsibility of object creation to factories. The Abstract Factory proposes creating a common interface representing this abstract factory — 🕵️♂️ — offering methods responsible for creating each object in a family.
Afterward, simply implement a concrete factory for each specific family.
With the classes implemented, your application only needs to configure which concrete class to use based on its rules, and the problem is solved.