Abstract Factory Pattern

The Abstract Factory pattern’s intent is to provide an interface to use for creating families of related (or dependent) objects without actually specifying their concrete classes. For a given set of related abstract classes, this pattern supplies a technique for creating instances of those abstract classes from an equivalent set of concrete subclasses. On some occasions, it may need to create an object without having to know which concrete subclass of object to create. Allows the creation of an instance of a class from a suite of related classes without having a client object to specify the actual concrete class to be instantiated.

The Abstract Factory pattern takes the concept of Factory pattern to the next level. In simple terms, an abstract factory is a class that provides an interface to produce a family of objects. In the Java programming language, it can be implemented either as an interface or as an abstract class.

The Abstract Factory pattern is useful when a client object wants to create an instance of one of a suite of related, dependent classes without having to know which specific concrete class is to be instantiated.