Is it OK for a factory method to return null?

Question

I\'m wondering about best practice here. Is it good practice for a factory method to return null if it can\'t create anything? Here\'s an example:

ICommand comma         


        

Answer 1

I agree with Jon Skeet. CreateCommand clearly implies construction.

If you won't throw an Exception, then in that scenario I would personally go with the NullCommand implementation, to avoid conditional statements in all consumers and possible NullReferenceException errors.