what exactly are "factories"?

[CaptainPinko]

a couple of times while just looking up stuff in the JavaDocs i came across various classes named something FACTORY, what exactly is the concept of the factory, like a stream isn't a class but a concept so i'm wondering if ne1 knows the dilly-yo behind "factories"

[axion_sa]

kinda hard to explain, but here goes...

they're pretty much just ready made classes that are used to access a specific interface, so u don't have to worry about doing it yourself.
e.g the BorderFactory is made up of static classes that return a Border (interface) object, which u can then use to (suprise suprise) set the border of a GUI component





B

[CaptainPinko]

i think i'm getting it.... anyone else?

[Dillinger4]

I think axion_sa pretty much summed
it up. I don't know the exact definition
but they seem to give you a handle to
a specific class or interface.

Toolkit tk =  tk.getDefaultTookKit();
Image image = tk.getImage();

[Cudabean]

Good question. Didn't know the answer, but I'd seen reference to them so I did a little searching. Found this in usenet:

A factory class is a class that contains a method that returns objects of another class. You use that method instead of the constructor to create the new objects. This can be useful if you have a situation where you need to choose one of several classes based on some parameter. A constructor can't do that.

cudabean

[CaptainPinko]

so kinda like server sockets(i think that what they're called...) where they listen for a connection and then return a connected socket instead of using a constructor?