de.schlichtherle.io.archive.Archive Maven / Gradle / Ivy
/*
* Copyright (C) 2006-2010 Schlichtherle IT Services
*
* Licensed 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 de.schlichtherle.io.archive;
/**
* Describes general properties of any archive.
* A single instance of this interface is created for every
* canonical path name representation of an archive file.
*
* Client applications should never implement this interface because more
* features may be added in future.
*
* @author Christian Schlichtherle
* @version $Id: Archive.java,v 1.4 2010/08/20 13:09:51 christian_schlichtherle Exp $
* @since TrueZIP 6.0
*/
public interface Archive {
/**
* Returns the canonical path of the archive file.
* A canonical path is both absolute and unique.
* The precise definition depends on the platform, but all elements in
* a canonical path are separated by {@link java.io.File#separator}s.
*
* This property may be used to determine some archive file specific
* parameters, such as passwords or similar.
* However, implementations must not assume that the file denoted by the
* path actually exists as a file in the native file system!
*
* @return A valid reference to a {@link String} object
* - never {@code null}.
* @see #getEnclArchive
*/
String getPath();
/**
* @return The enclosing archive or {@code null} if this archive is
* not enclosed in another archive
*/
Archive getEnclArchive();
}