What is Service Locator?

The Service Locator pattern is a creational design pattern that provides a central registry, known as the 'service locator', where components can register their services and clients can request them. It decouples clients from the concrete implementation of the services they need. Instead of directly instantiating or using dependency injection, the client asks the service locator for the desired service. This pattern is often used to manage dependencies in large applications, promoting flexibility and maintainability by abstracting the process of service discovery and access.