Intent: Provide an interface for creating families of related or dependent objects without specifying their concrete classes.

Applicability: Use the Abstract Factory pattern when

• a system should be independent of how its products are created, composed and represented
• a system should be configured with one of multiple families of products
• a family of related product objects is designed to be used together, and you need to enforce this constraint
• you want to provide a class library of products, and you want to reveal just their interfaces, not their implementations

Real world examples:

• javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory

Credits

• Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software