Factory Pattern

Factory of what? of classes. In simple words, if we have super class and n subclasses, and based on data provided, we have to return the object of one of the sub-classes, we use a factory pattern.
Let's take an example to understand this pattern.

Example: Let's suppose an application asks for entering the name and sex of a person. If the sex is male(M), it displays welcome message saying Hello Mr. and if the sex is Female (F), it displays message saying hello Ms.
The skeleton of the code can be given here.

public class Person{
    //name string
   public String name;
      private String gender;

      public String getName() {
        return name;
        }

     public String getGender(){
    return gender;
     }

}

This is a simple class person having methods for name and gender. Now we will have two sub-classes, Male and Female which will print the welcome message on screen.

public class Male extends Person{
     public Male(String fullName){
       System.out.println("Hello Mr."+fullName);
     }
}

Also the class Female

public class Female extends Person{
   public Female(String fullName){
       System.out.println("Hello Ms. "+fullName);
     }
}
Now, we have to create a client, or a salutationFactory which will return the welcome messgae depending on the data provided. 

public class SalutationFactory{
 public static void main(String args[]){
     SalutationFactory factory=new SalutationFactory();
     factory.getPerson(args[0],args[1]);
}
public Person getPerson(String name, String gender){
     if(gender.equals("M"))
        return new Male(name);
else if(gender.equals("F"))
       return new Female(name);
  else
      return null;
   }
}

This class accepts two arguments from the system at runtime and prints the names.

Running the program:

After compiling and running the code on my computer with the arguments Srinivas and M:

java Srinivas M

the result returned is : "Hello Mr. Srinivas".

when to use a Factory Pattern?

the factory patterns can be used in following cases:

•  when a class does not know which class of objects it must create.
• a class specifies its sub-classes to specify which objects to create.
• In programmers language( very raw form), you can use factory pattern where you have to create an object of any one of sub-classes depending on the data provided.