The Factory Method design pattern is a creational design pattern that provides an interface for creating objects in a super class, but allows subclasses to alter the type of objects that will be created. It defers the instantiation of objects to subclasses.
The intent of the Factory Method design pattern is to create objects without specifying the exact class of object that will be created. This allows for more flexibility in the system, as it can be easily extended to create new types of objects without requiring modification to the existing code.
Problem
Imagine that you are creating a software application that allows users to create and customize their own products. The products can be of various types, such as clothing, accessories, and home decor. Each product type has its own specific customization options, such as size, color, and material.
Each of these concrete factory classes would have the necessary information and logic to create objects of the appropriate product type, with the appropriate customization options. The application could then use the appropriate factory class to create a product based on the user’s selection, allowing the user to customize the product as needed.
In this scenario, you could use the Factory Method design pattern to create a flexible and extensible system for creating and customizing products. You could define a super class called ProductFactory that contains an abstract method createProduct() for creating a new product. The concrete subclasses of the ProductFactory class would then override the createProduct() method to create objects of specific product types, such as ClothingFactory, AccessoryFactory, and HomeDecorFactory.
Using the Factory Method design pattern in this way would allow you to create a flexible and extensible system for creating and customizing products, without having to specify the exact class of product that is being created in the main application code. This makes it easier to add new types of products to the system, as you would simply need to create a new concrete factory class for the new product type and override the createProduct() method to create objects of the appropriate type.