To provide a counterpoint to the "Perl doesn't usually need factories" replies, I use a factory in PDF::Template to manage the nodename-to-classname mapping. This way, I can do something like: 
my $obj = $factory->create_element( $node_name, @args );

# Check to see if $obj represents a 'foobar' node
if ( $obj->isa( 'foobar' ) ) {
    # Do something
}

[download]
This is important to me for three reasons:
  1. My users can register new nodenames and the factory manages that
  2. I have some classes that can handle more than one nodename. For example, IF and CONDITIONAL are aliases to each other and are both handled by PDF::Template::Element::Conditional.
  3. In most of the code, I need to differentiate what's a container (can have children) and what's an element (can't have children). However, in the parsing code, I don't care about that (because validation is handled somewhere else).
Does that help?
My criteria for good software:
  1. Does it work?
  2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?

In reply to Re: Do I need a Factory Class At This Point? by dragonchild
in thread Do I need a Factory Class At This Point? by jffry

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.