Java Video Tutorial

Abstract Factory Design Pattern

80 Comments

Abstract Factory Design Pattern TutorialHere is my Abstract Factory design pattern tutorial. I also take a second look at the Factory design pattern here as well.

This is considered a hard pattern to understand, but I consider it to be a combination of all you have learned previously. You just need to understand that each step is separated by either a abstract class or an interface. This makes it possible to make extremely flexible objects.

All of the code follows the video and is heavily commented.

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If you want the Alien Spaceship diagram, it as at the bottom of the page.

Code from the Video

EnemyShipTesting.java

EnemyShipBuilding.java

UFOEnemyShipBuilding.java

EnemyShipFactory.java

UFOEnemyShipFactory.java

UFOBossEnemyShipFactory.java

EnemyShip.java

UFOEnemyShip.java

UFOBossEnemyShip.java

ESEngine.java

ESWeapon.java

ESUFOGun.java

ESUFOEngine.java

ESUFOBossGun.java

ESUFOBossEngine.java

Abstract Factory Design Pattern Diagram

Click on it, to see it full screen

Abstract Factory Design Pattern

80 thoughts on “Abstract Factory Design Pattern”

  2. Thanks Derek for all the tutorials , but this one I am finding little difficult to grasp. The program flow are little long. May be , you can do similar kinds with shorter ones. Just a suggestion.

    Reply

    1. Thank you 🙂 I’ll revisit design patterns in my refactoring tutorial. Hopefully that will help. It requires a pretty solid understanding of OOD. Once you can completely understand objects you’ll get it. Don’t give up

      Reply

  3. Hi!! Thank you for all tutorials you did on DP!! R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
    Is there any chance you can translate this Abstract Factory DP to UML notation, please??
    I’m not sure how to UML this example. Thanks!

    Regards,
    J.

    Reply

    1. You’re very welcome 🙂 I’ll be making true uml diagrams for all of the patterns in the refactoring tutorial that is starting now. I’m not done with patterns and you can expect me to provide higher end tutorials now that I have covered them using very easy to understand diagrams. Thanks for the request

      Reply

  4. Author has keen knowledge on what is being delivered here. I started java programming and got good knowledge by going through your design pattern tutorials. It is worth time spending and applying those tricks in real world.

    One small request is there a possibility to provide a zip file of all patterns code? That would be great help for all of us who are learning here. We can refer them as and when we face the challenges in future. I know we can always cut and paste but zip file would be great short cut:)

    Thanks!

    Reply

    1. Hi, I’m glad you enjoyed the design patterns tutorials. I have to do some house keeping and will provide the pattern uml designs and the code in zipped format. I’ll be covering patterns as well in the refactoring tutorial. Thank you for the request

      Reply

  5. A big thanks to you Derek, I must say that you have an innate knowledge of the OOPS subject.

    I thought that I knew it all, but after watching your tuts on YouTube(for now I have watched till Abstract Factory Pattern), I feel like a naive, though I was aware of Patterns; I never used them in my real coding ever, because I knew very little about how to put them to practice, but after watching those videos I am eager to implement them in my day to day programming at work and also in my self projects.

    Thumbs up mate, thank you once again and please continue your effort on teaching me what I do not know.

    Seriously you are doing a very good job, please keep it up.

    Regards:
    Arif Nadeem

    Reply

    1. Thank you Arif 🙂 Design patterns are something that you learn to use unlike most anything else in programming. I’m sure you remember the days in which OOP didn’t make sense. Soon design patterns will make sense just like you have learned to value OOP over procedural programming. Thank you for the nice comment! I do my best

      Reply

  6. Thank you for your excellent tutorials on design patterns. It might be a obvious to others but I have a question on the code presented above. UFOBossEnemyShip and UFOEnemyShip classes seem to have duplicated codes here. Is there any reason to have multiple classes on EnemyShip classes for this specific example?

    Reply

    1. They are similar, but they don’t have to be. I only made them similar so that I didn’t distract from the pattern. This is often considered to be a complex pattern, so I wanted to focus on the fact that the factory was just producing objects with attributes being the only thing that differs. I hope that helps

      Reply

    1. Thank you 🙂 I’m not sure what problem you are having. Sometimes the page takes a few seconds to load. Sorry about the speed. I had to recently add a ton of security to the site and that is slowing things down a bit

      Reply

      1. The ESUFOBossEngine.java code in the web page:

        the Java keywords are not highlighting (they are remaining black rather than blue). Also the return string is all black rather than blue.

        Reply

  8. Great job ! Your tutorials are very well explained and to the point !
    Isn’t there a link on this page for downloading all the code in one .jar file ? It’s handier to navigate it on eclipse with the shortcuts.

    Reply

    1. Thank you 🙂 Ill add that to my to do list. I thought it might be confusing because I use file names that help people connect them to the proper video rather than to be descriptive. Sorry about that

      Reply

  9. Thanks you very much for the tutorial. I have read some book but I was not fully clear about the pattern. With this tutorial my pattern concepts getting stronger.

    Reply

  10. Great Tutorial i’ve ever seen =) Thx Derek for your effort.

    I have just one question on abstract factory tutorial. Is that the reason this tutorial didn’t make fatories as singleton is because the next tutorial is singleton? Generally do we use singleton over here abstract factory as well? quite a bit difficult understand at once.

    Thanks again for the great tutorial.

    Reply

      1. Thx again Derak=)

        Now I am watching Flyweight Pattern. I am planing to go through all of your tutorial that i found very helpful!

        Reply

  11. Hello Mr Derek!
    First of all. Thank you so much for your videos. They are really great and I learn alot by just watching them.
    I wonder if its possible to download the code as a zip file or project? I would be very gratefull if it was possible?

    Thanks again.
    / Kalle

    Reply

    2. You’re very welcome 🙂 I’m sorry, but I’m not sure which files your looking for. I have all of the code on the site. If you want to get rid of the line numbers drift your mouse over the upper right edge of the code and click on the icon named View Source. I hope that helps

      Reply

      1. hello Derek, again thank you so much for the excellent tutorials. i also have the same request. yes, we can copy the files one at a time but they are so many. if for example the abstract factory design pattern had a zipped folder with all the java class files in it so that all code for this pattern could be downloaded at once, it would help so much. otherwise thanks for your time.

        Reply

  12. Excellent tutorial.. Really helped me understand the patterns better and relate to it with real life examples.. Thanks once again..

    Reply

  14. Hello, I’m very glad I found this tutorial, without it I wouldn’t be making my own version of an abstract-factory to share it with my classmates on a presentation (next week). Thank you very much!!!

    God bless you 😀

    –>A colombian software engineering student.

    Reply

  15. thanks so so much Derek, for these excellent tutorials. My OOD skills have greatly improved. can’t thank you enough!!
    cheers

    Reply

    1. … actually to introduce myself, I am a Ugandan (East African) Software Engineering student (Makerere University).. kr.

      Reply

      1. Sir you are an awesome teacher! I am from Pakistan, learning and enjoying a lot from your tutorials sitting home! I will be getting a new skill just because of you!
        Thankx alot and keep up the good work!

        Reply

        1. I find it amazing that people in Pakistan are watching my videos! I’m actually more popular outside of my country then I am in it. It is very nice to be able to help people all over the world. Thank you for taking the time to write the nice message 🙂

          Reply

  16. So you have the tech. to create UFOs… huh? 🙂

    Thanks for great tutorials like these. As someone has already said above, you are helping us develop new skills. Many, many thanks for all this !

    Reply

    1. That’s funny 🙂 I definitely would love to cover electronics from the ground up. Then we could build anything!

      I’m very happy that I have been able to help so many people.

      Reply

      1. the electronics stuff would be amazing!
        this tutorial is amazing!

        knowledge feels so awesome! thanks a million! 🙂

        Reply

        1. You’re very welcome 🙂 I’ll see what I can do about the electronics video. I have been using Arduinos constantly lately, but I don’t know how to fit a tutorial on them into what I’ve been working on

          Reply

  17. What is the difference between the factory and abstract factory pattern? When to use which one? Thanks you’re the best I’m enjoying your video.

    Reply

      1. Hi,
        yours presentations are great, but this one makes me little embarrassed…

        I think all plays in main() method.
        If abstract factory returns concrete object, then it becomes just factory.
        Instead it should return factory object . After that, you can easily construct objects which belongs to the Same Type.
        In your example, it’s vary hard to get new object ‘ShipCaptain’ , with different values for types – UFO and UFOBOSS. To do it, you have to add another two ‘if’ in UFOEnemyShipBuilding.

        Please try think that way:

        IShipFactory=abstractFactory.getFactory(string typeOf); in example

        IShip=IShipFactory.getShip();
        ICaptain=IShipFactory.getCaptain();

        Then, you have to make choice only once in abstractFactory which type of factory return.
        All actions are moved to another level.
        After that, you still can create ship type of ‘UfoBoss’ with different painting, for example.

        your method (need another argument):

        EnemyShip theBoss = MakeUFOs.orderTheShip(“UFO BOSS”,”Brown”);

        my way:

        IShip=IShipFactory.getShip(“Brown”);

        And if you have one factory, when you creates another object , you are sure that all belongs to the same type family.

        What do you think???

        Reply

        1. I think you have a very good idea and I’m glad that you came up with that and presented it here. I did my best to try and keep the example easy to understand above all else. I didn’t optimize the code to it’s best because of that. Thank you for the input.

          Reply

  18. Hi Drerk, at 3:20 min of this video, you said “we are going to return an UFOEnemyShip which is abstract class”. UFOEnemyShip is concrete class. Am I right or I am missing something?

    Reply

  19. Derek, you are da man!

    One question though. Did you intentionally create UFOEnemyShip and UFOBossEnemyShip? It feels they do not have any meaning in this sample (their code is exactly the same too). It feels that just EnemyShip class would be enough for this sample: make it usual class, not abstract, move EnemyShipFactory property into it and make makeShip method defined in it as well. It would do exactly the same thing as all the specific details are encapsulated in factories and no specific details are in ships.

    Or maybe I’m missing something here…

    Anyway, this presentation rocks!

    Reply

    1. Thank you 🙂 Yes the abstract factory isn’t really required for something this simple. I used this example as you said just to keep the pattern simple and easier to understand.

      Reply

  20. Thanks you very much for your effort man,you are emazing man :)for sure every one who appreciate what mr Derek do have to donate even 5 dolla and me i will be among of those who donate 🙂

    I would like to ask you if there is posibility of getting slide which you are using in your lecture as revision to us:) for example in absract factory you explain a lot of stuff out of codes need to welled understood and revised

    Reply

    1. You’re very welcome 🙂 There is no reason to donate. Your appreciation is more then enough. I may be able to get you a slide from the presentation. I didn’t keep them neat because I wasn’t planning on using them again. What slide do you specifically need?

      Reply

      1. Ur so Kind Mr Derek :)In nowdays its very rear to find the people like you :)May God Blessing You..Amin,okaay for now i would like to have slides on factory design and abstract factory design 🙂

        Reply

  21. Thanks a lot Derek. I have been trying to learn design patterns since a long time using other resources on the internet, but every time I started, I lost interest in the middle (rather the material I was following made it so).

    But your videos are excellent, easy to follow are very crisp.

    Thanks a lot.

    -Manju

    Reply

  22. Hey Derek very nice tutorial! I just don’t see how to expand this with various types of EnemyShip, can you make an example of how it would be?

    Thanks.

    Reply

  23. I have been studying and following you and the videos since a long time. I really loved them all, You are a rockstar!

    Reply

  24. Hi Derek! Thank you for the tutorial you made and it is simply awesome! What you did is so meaningful to guide people who really want to learn how to code correctly.

    Actually I have a question here, so how do you decide whether to use an abstract class or an interface when you want to abstract things out? I noticed that you used an interface when you have all the methods to be abstract, and used an abstract class when you have something to share with its subclasses.

    But I heard people say that you should use an abstract class when you want to specify that the class is a type of its super class. Just like UFOBossEnemyShip extends EnemyShip and UFOBossEnemyShips are one kind of EnemyShips. But what about ESWeapon? I know it is fully abstract and you used an interface to represent it. But can I set it as an abstract class as well just because ESUFOGun is one type of ESWeapon?

    Thank you in advance!

    Reply

    1. You’re very welcome 🙂 I’m very happy that you found the video useful. All programmers have opinions on how to do certain things and this is just my opinion. If I can keep all methods abstract in my opinion it should always be an interface. If not following that rule in some way improves your ability to understand the code though feel free to not follow it. I hope that helps.

      Reply

  25. Derek could you please explain how the strategy design pattern is used in the engine and weapon sub classes?

    Thanking you.

    Reply

  27. hi derek!,
    After watching and trying to analyse this tutorial in great detail this is what I came to conclusion :
    abstract factory compels one to select the class (for creation of object ) according to user input, then implement the code(abstract method ) strictly according to guidelines provided by interfaces at each stage.
    Is this right ?

    Reply

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