Creational Patterns : Prototype

Properties:

-          When cost of creating an object from scracth is high it might be good idea to create it by cloning an existing object.

-          Identified by a super class declaring a clone method and implemented clone method inside class.

Implementation:

-          Class extends a super class which declares a clone method.

-          Clone method is implemented to create a copy of the object.

Java Standard Library Implementations:

-          Any class implementing  java.lang.Cloneable

Example Usage:

// simply person clone is invoked

Person newPerson = (Person)person.clone();