Factory methods

[Sanjay Karanjkar]

Can someone tell me what the term 'factory methods' mean and how they differ from normal methods?
Are there other entities also (like classes, interfaces) that can become 'factory' ?
Thanks,
Sanjay

[deekasha gunwant]

Hi Sanjay,
there are some classes whose constructors are declared private. now to instantiate or to get the reference to their instance these classes ,some static method is provided that returns the reference tp the instance of the class.
such a method is called factory method.
for example we don't have access to the Runtime class' constructor but Runtime.getRuntime() returns the reference to the Runtime object.and withis reference we can use the instance method of the class.

factory methods are use to control the number of instances of a class.
regards
deepti

[Sanjay Karanjkar]

Thanx a lot Deekasha......