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/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */
package org.apache.commons.beanutils;

/**
 * A DynaClass is a simulation of the functionality of
 * java.lang.Class for classes implementing the
 * DynaBean interface.  DynaBean instances that share the same
 * DynaClass all have the same set of available properties, along with any
 * associated data types, read-only states, and write-only states.
 *
 * @version $Id$
 */

public interface DynaClass {


    /**
     * Return the name of this DynaClass (analogous to the
     * getName() method of java.lang.ClassDynaClass implementation class to support
     * different dynamic classes, with different sets of properties.
     *
     * @return the name of the DynaClass
     */
    public String getName();


    /**
     * Return a property descriptor for the specified property, if it exists;
     * otherwise, return null.
     *
     * @param name Name of the dynamic property for which a descriptor
     *  is requested
     * @return The descriptor for the specified property
     *
     * @throws IllegalArgumentException if no property name is specified
     */
    public DynaProperty getDynaProperty(String name);


    /**
     * Return an array of ProperyDescriptors for the properties
     * currently defined in this DynaClass.  If no properties are defined, a
     * zero-length array will be returned.
     *
     * FIXME - Should we really be implementing
     * getBeanInfo() instead, which returns property descriptors
     * and a bunch of other stuff?
     *
     * @return the set of properties for this DynaClass
     */
    public DynaProperty[] getDynaProperties();


    /**
     * Instantiate and return a new DynaBean instance, associated
     * with this DynaClass.
     *
     * @return A new DynaBean instance
     *
     * @throws IllegalAccessException if the Class or the appropriate
     *  constructor is not accessible
     * @throws InstantiationException if this Class represents an abstract
     *  class, an array class, a primitive type, or void; or if instantiation
     *  fails for some other reason
     */
    public DynaBean newInstance()
            throws IllegalAccessException, InstantiationException;


}