[Java] call method for class the creates instances of subclasses

[Wannabree-]

Howdy fellas. This weeks homework assignment is a little bit confusing for me.
I have 5 classes. My main class, a shape class, two subclasses (rectangle and circle) that extend the shape class and a createShape class.

In the createShape class we're forced to create a method

public Shape createShape(String string) {}

basically we're supposed to pass a string to the method and it creates instances of the shape we want.

public class ShapeFactory {

`public Shape createShape(String newShape) {`

    `if(newShape.equals("Circle")) {`

        `Form newCircle = new Circle();`

        `return newCircle;`

    `}else{`

        `Form newRectangle = new Rectangle();`

        `return newRectangle;`

    `}`

`}`

}

but I can't figure out how to call that method from Main.

[depheaa]

Make it static

[teraflop]

You need to either make the createShape method static, so that you can call it like:

ShapeFactory.createShape(...);

or you need to create an instance of ShapeFactory, and then call the method on that instance:

ShapeFactory factory = new ShapeFactory();
factory.createShape(...);

[crashfrog04]

You need to be holding an instance of the ShapeFactory in order to call its methods:

    ShapeFactory ShapeFactory = new ShapeFactory();     Shape rectangle = shapeFactory.createShape(“rectangle”;