Re: Is a static method sufficient to call it factory?

f.vivoli@xxxxxxxxx wrote: 
Talking about factories why someone propose the way

Factory.getInstance().createClass(aType);

instead of simply

Factory.createClass(aType);

That is,
why the singleton?

Without knowing the inner details of the involved methods it is difficult to say, but very often a singleton is just used to hide a static method or a global variable, so the code looks more object-oriented. It is maybe the most common abuse of the singleton design pattern.

Should this be the case then I would suggest to drop the singleton. Why do you want to fool yourself with a singleton, if you don't need any of its features?

In the end, is a class with a static method eligible to be an use of a
factory method pattern? It doesn't resemble the structure of the GOF
pattern, since it doesn't use subclassing...

Do you want to write more code just to follow a book, or do you want to have simpler (so less error prone) code? If a GoF pattern doesn't fit, it doesn't fit, so why spend extra effort to make it fit?

/Thomas
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