Differences between Abstract Factory Pattern and F

Question

I know there are many posts out there about the differences between these two patterns, but there are a few things that I cannot find.

From what I have been reading, I see that the factory method pattern allows you to define how to create a single concrete product but hiding the implementation from the client as they will see a generic product. My first question is about the abstract factory. Is its role to allow you to create families of concrete objects in (that can depend on what specific factory you use) rather than just a single concrete object? Does the abstract factory only return one very large object or many objects depending on what methods you call?

My final two questions are about a single quote that I cannot fully understand that I have seen in numerous places:

One difference between the two is that with the Abstract Factory pattern, a class delegates the responsibility of object instantiation to another object via composition whereas the Factory Method pattern uses inheritance and relies on a subclass to handle the desired object instantiation.

My understanding is that the factory method pattern has a Creator interface that will make the ConcreteCreator be in charge of knowing which ConcreteProduct to instantiate. Is this what it means by using inheritance to handle object instantiation?

Now with regards to that quote, how exactly does the Abstract Factory pattern delegate the responsibility of object instantiation to another object via composition? What does this mean? It looks like the Abstract Factory pattern also uses inheritance to do the construction process as well in my eyes, but then again I am still learning about these patterns.

Any help especially with the last question, would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

allow me to put it precisely. most of the answers have already explained, provided diagrams and examples as well. so my anwer would just be one liner. my own words: - “abstract factory pattern adds on the abstract layer over multiple factory method implementations. means abstract factory contains or composite one or more than one factory method patterns”

Answer 2

I would favor Abstract Factory over Factory Method anytime. From Tom Dalling's example (great explanation btw) above, we can see that Abstract Factory is more composable in that all we need to do is passing a different Factory to the constructor (constructor dependency injection in use here). But Factory Method requires us to introduce a new class (more things to manage) and use subclassing. Always prefer composition over inheritance.

Answer 3

Understand the differences in the motivations:

Suppose you’re building a tool where you’ve objects and a concrete implementation of the interrelations of the objects. Since you foresee variations in the objects, you’ve created an indirection by assigning the responsibility of creating variants of the objects to another object (we call it abstract factory). This abstraction finds strong benefit since you foresee future extensions needing variants of those objects.

Another rather intriguing motivation in this line of thoughts is a case where every-or-none of the objects from the whole group will have a corresponding variant. Based on some conditions, either of the variants will be used and in each case all objects must be of same variant. This might be a bit counter intuitive to understand as we often tend think that - as long as the variants of an object follow a common uniform contract (interface in broader sense), the concrete implementation code should never break. The intriguing fact here is that, not always this is true especially when expected behavior cannot be modeled by a programming contract.

A simple (borrowing the idea from GoF) is any GUI applications say a virtual monitor that emulates look-an-feel of MS or Mac or Fedora OS’s. Here, for example, when all widget objects such as window, button, etc. have MS variant except a scroll-bar that is derived from MAC variant, the purpose of the tool fails badly.

These above cases form the fundamental need of Abstract Factory Pattern.

On the other hand, imagine you’re writing a framework so that many people can built various tools (such as the one in above examples) using your framework. By the very idea of a framework, you don’t need to, albeit you could not use concrete objects in your logic. You rather put some high level contracts between various objects and how they interact. While you (as a framework developer) remain at a very abstract level, each builders of the tool is forced to follow your framework-constructs. However, they (the tool builders) have the freedom to decide what object to be built and how all the objects they create will interact. Unlike the previous case (of Abstract Factory Pattern), you (as framework creator) don’t need to work with concrete objects in this case; and rather can stay at the contract level of the objects. Furthermore, unlike the second part of the previous motivations, you or the tool-builders never have the situations of mixing objects from variants. Here, while framework code remains at contract level, every tool-builder is restricted (by the nature of the case itself) to using their own objects. Object creations in this case is delegated to each implementer and framework providers just provide uniform methods for creating and returning objects. Such methods are inevitable for framework developer to proceed with their code and has a special name called Factory method (Factory Method Pattern for the underlying pattern).

Few Notes:

• If you’re familiar with ‘template method’, then you’d see that factory methods are often invoked from template methods in case of programs pertaining to any form of framework. By contrast, template methods of application-programs are often simple implementation of specific algorithm and void of factory-methods.
• Furthermore, for the completeness of the thoughts, using the framework (mentioned above), when a tool-builder is building a tool, inside each factory method, instead of creating a concrete object, he/she may further delegate the responsibility to an abstract-factory object, provided the tool-builder foresees variations of the concrete objects for future extensions.

Sample Code:

//Part of framework-code
BoardGame {
    Board createBoard() //factory method. Default implementation can be provided as well
    Piece createPiece() //factory method

    startGame(){        //template method
         Board borad = createBoard()
         Piece piece = createPiece()
         initState(board, piece)
    }
}


//Part of Tool-builder code
Ludo inherits  BoardGame {
     Board createBoard(){ //overriding of factory method
         //Option A: return new LudoBoard() //Lodu knows object creation
         //Option B: return LudoFactory.createBoard() //Lodu asks AbstractFacory
     }
….
}

//Part of Tool-builder code
Chess inherits  BoardGame {
    Board createBoard(){ //overriding of factory method
        //return a Chess board
    }
    ….
}

Answer 4

To make it very simple with minimum interface & please focus "//1":

class FactoryProgram
    {
        static void Main()
        {
            object myType = Program.MyFactory("byte");
            Console.WriteLine(myType.GetType().Name);

            myType = Program.MyFactory("float"); //3
            Console.WriteLine(myType.GetType().Name);

            Console.ReadKey();
        }

        static object MyFactory(string typeName)
        {
            object desiredType = null; //1
            switch (typeName)
            {
                case "byte": desiredType = new System.Byte(); break; //2
                case "long": desiredType = new System.Int64(); break;
                case "float": desiredType = new System.Single(); break;
                default: throw new System.NotImplementedException();
            }
            return desiredType;
        }
    }

Here important points: 1. Factory & AbstractFactory mechanisms must use inheritance (System.Object-> byte, float ...); so if you have inheritance in program then Factory(Abstract Factory would not be there most probably) is already there by design 2. Creator (MyFactory) knows about concrete type so returns concrete type object to caller(Main); In abstract factory return type would be an Interface.

interface IVehicle { string VehicleName { get; set; } }
interface IVehicleFactory
    {
        IVehicle CreateSingleVehicle(string vehicleType);
    }
class HondaFactory : IVehicleFactory
    {
        public IVehicle CreateSingleVehicle(string vehicleType)
        {
            switch (vehicleType)
            {
                case "Sports": return new SportsBike();
                case "Regular":return new RegularBike();
                default: throw new ApplicationException(string.Format("Vehicle '{0}' cannot be created", vehicleType));
            }
        }
    }
class HeroFactory : IVehicleFactory
    {
        public IVehicle CreateSingleVehicle(string vehicleType)
        {
            switch (vehicleType)
            {
                case "Sports":  return new SportsBike();
                case "Scooty": return new Scooty();
                case "DarkHorse":return new DarkHorseBike();
                default: throw new ApplicationException(string.Format("Vehicle '{0}' cannot be created", vehicleType));
            }
        }
    }

class RegularBike : IVehicle { public string VehicleName { get { return "Regular Bike- Name"; } set { VehicleName = value; } } }
class SportsBike : IVehicle { public string VehicleName { get { return "Sports Bike- Name"; } set { VehicleName = value; } } }
class RegularScooter : IVehicle { public string VehicleName { get { return "Regular Scooter- Name"; } set { VehicleName = value; } } }
class Scooty : IVehicle { public string VehicleName { get { return "Scooty- Name"; } set { VehicleName = value; } } }
class DarkHorseBike : IVehicle { public string VehicleName { get { return "DarkHorse Bike- Name"; } set { VehicleName = value; } } }

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        IVehicleFactory honda = new HondaFactory(); //1
        RegularBike hondaRegularBike = (RegularBike)honda.CreateSingleVehicle("Regular"); //2
        SportsBike hondaSportsBike = (SportsBike)honda.CreateSingleVehicle("Sports");
        Console.WriteLine("******* Honda **********"+hondaRegularBike.VehicleName+ hondaSportsBike.VehicleName);

        IVehicleFactory hero = new HeroFactory();
        DarkHorseBike heroDarkHorseBike = (DarkHorseBike)hero.CreateSingleVehicle("DarkHorse");
        SportsBike heroSportsBike = (SportsBike)hero.CreateSingleVehicle("Sports");
        Scooty heroScooty = (Scooty)hero.CreateSingleVehicle("Scooty");
        Console.WriteLine("******* Hero **********"+heroDarkHorseBike.VehicleName + heroScooty.VehicleName+ heroSportsBike.VehicleName);

        Console.ReadKey();
    }
}

Important points: 1. Requirement: Honda would create "Regular", "Sports" but Hero would create "DarkHorse", "Sports" and "Scooty". 2. why two interfaces? One for manufacturer type(IVehicleFactory) and another for product factory(IVehicle); other way to understand 2 interfaces is abstract factory is all about creating related objects 2. The catch is the IVehicleFactory's children returning and IVehicle(instead of concrete in factory); so I get parent variable(IVehicle); then I create actual concrete type by calling CreateSingleVehicle and then casting parent object to actual child object. What would happen if I do RegularBike heroRegularBike = (RegularBike)hero.CreateSingleVehicle("Regular");; you will get ApplicationException and that's why we need generic abstract factory which I would explain if required. Hope it helps from beginner to intermediate audience.

Answer 5

Let us put it clear that most of the time in production code, we use abstract factory pattern because class A is programmed with interface B. And A needs to create instances of B. So A has to have a factory object to produce instances of B. So A is not dependent on any concrete instance of B. Hope it helps.

Answer 6

A lot of the above answers do not provide code comparisons between Abstract Factory and Factory Method pattern. Following is my attempt at explaining it via Java. Hope it helps someone in need of a simple explanation.

As GoF aptly says : Abstract Factory provides an interface for creating families of related or dependent objects without specifying their concrete classes.

        public class Client {
            public static void main(String[] args) {
               ZooFactory zooFactory = new HerbivoreZooFactory();       
               Animal animal1 = zooFactory.animal1();
               Animal animal2 = zooFactory.animal2();
               animal1.sound();
               animal2.sound();

               System.out.println();

               AnimalFactory animalFactory = new CowAnimalFactory();
               Animal animal = animalFactory.createAnimal();
               animal.sound();
            }
        }

        public interface Animal {
            public void sound();
        }

        public class Cow implements Animal {

            @Override
            public void sound() {
                System.out.println("Cow moos");
            }

        }

        public class Deer implements Animal {

            @Override
            public void sound() {
                System.out.println("Deer grunts");
            }

        }

        public class Hyena implements Animal {

            @Override
            public void sound() {
                System.out.println("Hyena.java");
            }

        }

        public class Lion implements Animal {

            @Override
            public void sound() {
                System.out.println("Lion roars");
            }

        }

        public interface ZooFactory {
            Animal animal1();

            Animal animal2();
        }

        public class CarnivoreZooFactory implements ZooFactory {

            @Override
            public Animal animal1() {
                return new Lion();
            }

            @Override
            public Animal animal2() {
                return new Hyena();
            }

        }

        public class HerbivoreZooFactory implements ZooFactory{

            @Override
            public Animal animal1() {
                return new Cow();
            }

            @Override
            public Animal animal2() {
                return new Deer();
            }

        }

        public interface AnimalFactory {
            public Animal createAnimal();
        }

        public class CowAnimalFactory implements AnimalFactory{

            @Override
            public Animal createAnimal() {
                return new Cow();
            }

        }

        public class DeerAnimalFactory implements AnimalFactory{

            @Override
            public Animal createAnimal() {
                return new Deer();
            }

        }

        public class HyenaAnimalFactory implements AnimalFactory{

            @Override
            public Animal createAnimal() {
                return new Hyena();
            }

        }

        public class LionAnimalFactory implements AnimalFactory{

            @Override
            public Animal createAnimal() {
                return new Lion();
            }

        }