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What are Creational Patterns?

Creational patterns are focused towards how to instantiate an object or group of related objects.
Creational design patterns deal with object creation mechanisms, trying to create objects in a manner suitable to the situation. The basic form of object creation could result in design problems or added complexity to the design. Creational design patterns solve this problem by somehow controlling this object creation.

Wikipedia Definition

In software engineering, creational design patterns are design patterns that deal with object creation mechanisms, trying to create objects in a manner suitable to the situation. The basic form of object creation could result in design problems or added complexity to the design. Creational design patterns solve this problem by somehow controlling this object creation.

Available Creational Patterns

The following creational patterns are covered in this documentation:

Simple Factory

Generate instances without exposing instantiation logic

Factory Method

Delegate instantiation logic to child classes

Abstract Factory

A factory of factories for related object families

Builder

Construct complex objects step by step

Prototype

Create objects through cloning existing ones

Singleton

Ensure only one instance of a class exists

When to Use Creational Patterns?

Use creational patterns when:
  • Object creation logic is complex
  • You need to decouple object creation from usage
  • You want to control how objects are created and configured
  • You need to manage families of related objects
  • You want to avoid tight coupling between classes
Design patterns are not a silver bullet to all your problems. Do not try to force them; bad things are supposed to happen, if done so. Keep in mind that design patterns are solutions to problems, not solutions finding problems; so don’t overthink.

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