There are many cases in the Framework where you can obtain a new instance of a struct or class without calling its constructor yourself. The System.Convert class contains a host of static methods that work like this. To convert an integer to a Boolean, for example, you can call Convert.ToBoolean and pass in the integer. The return value of this method call is a new Boolean set to “true” if the integer was non-zero and “false” otherwise. The Convert class creates the Boolean for you with the correct value. Other type conversion methods work similarly. The Parse methods on Int32 and Double return new instances of those objects set to the appropriate value given only a string.

This strategy for creating new object instances is known as a Factory pattern. Rather than invoking the object’s constructor, you can ask the object factory to create the instance for you. That way, the factory class can hide the complexity of object creation (like how to parse a Double out of a string). If you wanted to change the details of creating the object, you’d only have to change the factory itself; you would not have to change every single place in the code where the constructor is called.

These type conversion methods are one variant of this pattern, since you’re not required to use the factory to create the objects in question. A more pure example of this pattern is the System.Net.WebRequest class, used to make a request and receive a response from a resource on the Internet. FTP, HTTP, and file system requests are supported by default. To create a request, call the Create method and pass in a URI. The Create method itself determines the appropriate protocol for the request and returns the appropriate subclass of WebRequest: HttpWebRequest, FtpWebRequest (new to the .NET Framework 2.0), or FileWebRequest. The caller doesn’t need to know the specifics of each protocol, only how to invoke the factory and work with the WebRequest that gets returned. If the URI changes from an HTTP address to an FTP address, the code won’t have to change at all. This is another common use of the Factory pattern. The parent class acts as a factory and returns a specific derived class based on parameters the client passes in. As in the WebRequest example, this hides the complexity of selecting an appropriate derived class from the caller.