Abstract Factory, Factory Method, Builder

Question

It may seem as if this is question is a dupe, but please bear with me - I promise I\'ve read the related posts (and the GOF book).

After everything I\'ve read, I still

Answer 1

Abstract Factory is particularly helpful for test driven development and reducing coupling.

For example, in C#:

public class Worker
{
    public IConsumerFactory Factory { get; set; }

    private IResource resource;

    public DoWork()
    {
        IConsumer consumer = Factory.CreateConsumer();
        consumer.Consume(resource);
    }
}

public interface IConsumerFactory
{
    IConsumer CreateConsumer();
}

public interface IConsumer
{
    void Consume(IResource resource);
}

public class DefaultConsumerFactory : IConsumerFactory
{
    public IConsumer CreateConsumer()
    {
        return new DefaultConsumer();
    }
}

public class DefaultConsumer : IConsumer
{
    public void Consume(IResource resource)
    {
      ... Do Work ...
    }
}

This way, you can use dependency injection to inject the default implementations for production code, and then you can easily mock the factory and the objects it creates.