brooklyn.event.Sensor Maven / Gradle / Ivy
package brooklyn.event;
import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.List;
import com.google.common.reflect.TypeToken;
import brooklyn.entity.Entity;
/**
* The interface implemented by concrete sensors.
*
* A sensor is a container for a piece of data of a particular type, and exists in a hierarchical namespace.
* The name of the sensor is described as a set of tokens separated by dots.
*
* @see SensorEvent
*/
public interface Sensor extends Serializable {
/**
* Returns the Java {@link Class} for the sensor data.
*
* This returns a "super" of T only in the case where T is generified,
* and in such cases it returns the Class instance for the unadorned T ---
* i.e. for List this returns Class ---
* this is of course because there is no actual Class> instance.
*/
Class getType();
/**
* Returns the Guava TypeToken (including generics info)
*/
TypeToken getTypeToken();
/**
* Returns the type of the sensor data, as a {@link String} representation of the class name.
* (Useful for contexts where Type is not accessible.)
*/
String getTypeName();
/**
* Returns the name of the sensor, in a dot-separated namespace.
*/
String getName();
/**
* Returns the constituent parts of the sensor name as a {@link List}.
*/
List getNameParts();
/**
* Returns the description of the sensor, for display.
*/
String getDescription();
/**
* Create a new {@link SensorEvent} object for a specific {@link Entity} and data point.
*/
SensorEvent newEvent(Entity entity, T value);
}