Gdtyjr

Has there been any research into how a contract factory might be made in Michelson/Liquidity?

To elaborate, in Solidity a contract factory might look like:

pragma solidity ^0.4.8;

contract Bakery 

 // index of created contracts

 address[] public contracts;

 // useful to know the row count in contracts index

 function getContractCount() 
 public
 constant
 returns(uint contractCount)
 
 return contracts.length;
 

 // deploy a new contract

 function newCookie()
 public
 returns(address newContract)
 
 Cookie c = new Cookie();
 contracts.push(c);
 return c;
 



contract Cookie 

 // suppose the deployed contract has a purpose

 function getFlavor()
 public
 constant
 returns (string flavor)
 
 return "mmm ... chocolate chip";
 

(referenced from https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/13415/deploy-contract-from-contract-in-solidity)

This is a powerful feature in DAPP development, as it allows you to build an object oriented structure for your DAPP where requests can create new contracts. It is a well established design pattern, so what would the equivalent be in the Tezos ecosystem?

There is a very succinct discussion in the announcement for SmartPy https://medium.com/@SmartPy_io/introducing-smartpy-and-smartpy-io-d4013bee7d4e#15ee.

The idea is to have a contract that holds a big_map and each element of the big_map represents a contract.

This is absolutely not restricted to SmartPy and it is directly doable in Michelson, Liquidity or Fi.

This subject also appeared here:
What is the BigMap container and why does it matter?