Am I implementing a generics-based Java factory correctly?

Question

I don\'t believe I am implementing the factory pattern correctly because the Application class\' createDocument method accepts any class type, not just

Answer 1

The code looks good. In a real implementation the factory method should not be declared to throw any of the reflection-related exceptions. And you will probably have some different code anyway to create the document.

The faxtory method should take a Class as its parameter, so that one cannot ask it to create a String, for example.

[update:] Code sample:

public Document createDocument(Class clazz) {
  try {
    return clazz.newInstance();
  } catch (InstantiationException e) {
    throw new IllegalArgumentException(e);
  }
}