Design Patterns in PHP 8: Simple factory

Hello, fellow developers!🧑🏼‍💻

Today, we're going to delve into the Simple Factory pattern. This pattern, while not officially recognized as a formal design pattern, is a commonly used idiom in object-oriented programming that provides a way to encapsulate the instantiation of specific types of objects.

The Simple Factory pattern is all about creating an object without exposing the creation logic to the client and referring to the newly created object using a common interface. It's called a "simple factory" because it's simple to understand and implement. It's essentially a single class that acts as a kind of factory for creating other objects.

The main idea behind the Simple Factory pattern is to create objects without having to specify the exact class of the object that will be created. This is done by creating objects by calling a factory method—either specified in an interface and implemented by child classes, or implemented in a base class and optionally overridden by derived classes—rather than by calling a constructor.

Imagine we're building a logistics management system that needs to support multiple types of transport like Truck, Ship, and Plane. We can use the Simple Factory pattern to create the appropriate type of transport based on the logistics requirement.

interface Transport
{
    public function deliver();
}

In this example, Transport is the common interface for all transport types.

class Truck implements Transport
{
    public function deliver()
    {
        return "Delivery by road in a box";
    }
}

class Ship implements Transport
{
    public function deliver() {
        return "Delivery by sea in a container";
    }
}

class Plane implements Transport
{
    public function deliver() {
        return "Delivery by air in a cargo";
    }
}

class TransportFactory
{
    public function createTransport($type)
    {
        return match ($type) {
            'truck' => new Truck(),
            'ship' => new Ship(),
            'plane' => new Plane(),
            default => throw new Exception("Invalid transport type"),
        };
    }
}

Truck, Ship, and Plane are concrete classes that implement the Transport interface. TransportFactory is the simple factory that creates the appropriate transport based on the type.

Now, let's see how we can use our Simple Factory:

$factory = new TransportFactory();

$transport = $factory->createTransport('truck');
echo $transport->deliver(); // Outputs: Delivery by road in a box

$transport = $factory->createTransport('ship');
echo $transport->deliver(); // Outputs: Delivery by sea in a container

$transport = $factory->createTransport('plane');
echo $transport->deliver(); // Outputs: Delivery by air in a cargo

As you can see, the Simple Factory pattern allows us to create different types of transport objects without knowing the concrete classes. This makes our code more flexible and easier to maintain.

To wrap up, the Simple Factory pattern is a handy tool when you need to centralize the creation of similar types of objects. It simplifies the code and makes it more readable and maintainable.

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Photo by Frans van Heerden: https://www.pexels.com/photo/grayscale-photography-of-locomotive-train-beside-factory-682078/