org.apache.commons.configuration.beanutils.BeanDeclaration Maven / Gradle / Ivy
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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.configuration.beanutils;
import java.util.Map;
/**
*
* Definition of an interface for declaring a bean in a configuration file.
*
*
* Commons Configurations allows to define beans (i.e. simple Java objects) in
* configuration files, which can be created at runtime. This is especially
* useful if you program against interfaces and want to define the concrete
* implementation class is a configuration file.
*
*
* This interface defines methods for retrieving all information about a bean
* that should be created from a configuration file, e.g. the bean's properties
* or the factory to use for creating the instance. With different
* implementations different "layouts" of bean declarations can be
* supported. For instance if an XML configuration file is used, all features of
* XML (e.g. attributes, nested elements) can be used to define the bean. In a
* properties file the declaration format is more limited. The purpose of this
* interface is to abstract from the concrete declaration format.
*
*
* @since 1.3
* @author Oliver Heger
* @version $Id: BeanDeclaration.java 439648 2006-09-02 20:42:10Z oheger $
*/
public interface BeanDeclaration
{
/**
* Returns the name of the BeanFactory that should be used
* for creating the bean instance. This can be null, then a default
* factory will be used.
*
* @return the name of the bean factory
*/
String getBeanFactoryName();
/**
* Here an arbitrary object can be returned that will be passed to the bean
* factory. Its meaning is not further specified. The purpose of this
* additional parameter is to support a further configuration of the bean
* factory that can be placed directly at the bean declaration.
*
* @return a parameter for the bean factory
*/
Object getBeanFactoryParameter();
/**
* Returns the name of the bean class, from which an instance is to be
* created. This value must be defined unless a default class is provided
* for the bean creation operation.
*
* @return the name of the bean class
*/
String getBeanClassName();
/**
* Returns a map with properties that should be initialized on the newly
* created bean. The map's keys are the names of the properties; the
* corresponding values are the properties' values. The return value can be
* null if no properties should be set.
*
* @return a map with properties to be initialized
*/
Map getBeanProperties();
/**
* Returns a map with declarations for beans that should be set as
* properties of the newly created bean. This allows for complex
* initialization szenarios: a bean for a bean that contains complex
* properties (e.g. other beans) can have nested declarations for defining
* these complex properties. The returned map's key are the names of the
* properties to initialze. The values are BeanDeclaration
* implementations. They will be treated like this declaration (in a
* recursive manner), and the resulting beans are assigned to the
* corresponding properties.
*
* @return a map with nested bean declarations
*/
Map getNestedBeanDeclarations();
}