As others are indicating, factories become more and more useful as your application becomes more and more "complex".
In the first app i built using CFC's, after about a year of iterations and improvements, i had well over 1800 CreateObject() calls in the thing. One day a problem arose because of the mapping to those objects. I wanted to fork the development, maintain the current version and keep going with a new one. So the 2 versions couldn't use the same mapping. I was nervous about doing a search and replace through the whole application, because i wasn't sure if it would break anything. So i carefully stepped through each CreateObject() call. It took me a long time, and i made a few mistakes along the way. All in all, i think it took me the better part of a day more or less to deal with it, after dithering about my approach, working through all those CreateObject() calls, and fixing my mistakes. It was on that day that the usefulness of factories really came home to me. If i had encapsulated all my CreateObject() calls in a factory, i could have simply copied the original, ran a quick search and replace on the copy, and even could have swapped the new factory in for the old one. If i had to possible fix a mapping issue every time i installed an instance of my app, if it were an ASP type of thing, then i'd only need to adjust the factory. Which makes all the instances of my app MUCH more maintainable, because i can roll out bug fixes to all the instances without fiddling with each one. Mike's comment about how CFC use has increased also applied to me. It didn't make sense to use a factory to me at first either. But the need crept up on me. That's the reason i'd suggest to someone for getting into factories early. Encapsulating object creation make your app much more flexible and easy to maintain, down the road. It's really true, even in ColdFusion. Nando On 12/12/06, Mike Kear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > My experience has been thinking i only have a few objects so it's not > really worth the effort of building a factory. But i built one anyway > for the experience. But when i look at that first OOP project now, a > year later, i see my site which was originally going to have only 10 > objects now has more than 50. I'm REALLY glad i built the factory now! > > Once you see how great this OOP thing is, you start bolting on > applications like there's no tomorrow, and complexity starts coming > looking for you. > > When you think you are only going to have a few objects, I reckon for > most cases, that's only because you have missed something. And you're > going to get more complexity anyway. > > Cheers > Mike Kear > Windsor, NSW, Australia > Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer > AFP Webworks > http://afpwebworks.com > ColdFusion, PHP, ASP, ASP.NET hosting from AUD$15/month > > > On 12/12/06, Judith Dinowitz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >> I'm going to look for some decent example of a objectFactory and do > > >> some testing to see if there is a performance hit. > > > > > >That sounds like a great idea. Here is an objectFactory to look at and > > >compare with: > > > > http://www.phillnacelli.net/blog/index.cfm/2006/11/21/ObjectFactory-Explained > > > > > >Please let us know what you find. > > > > > >-Aaron > > Well, as I believe Chris Scott explained in his article "ColdSpring > Fundamentals" (FAQU 2), object factories really make a difference when your > application gets highly complex and you start having many more objects to > initialize with dependencies... That's what ColdSpring tries to do, to > manage the objects for you. If you've only got 8 or 9 objects, then maybe an > object factory is not for you. > > > > Judith > > > > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Create robust enterprise, web RIAs. Upgrade & integrate Adobe Coldfusion MX7 with Flex 2 http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;56760587;14748456;a?http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/flex2/?sdid=LVNU Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:263698 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
