org.apache.bval.util.AccessStrategy Maven / Gradle / Ivy
/**
* 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.bval.util;
import java.lang.annotation.ElementType;
import java.lang.reflect.Type;
/**
* Description: abstract class to encapsulate different strategies
* to get the value of a Property. This class is designed such that
* subclasses are intended to know internally to which property they refer,
* with only the particular target instance being externally required
* to calculate the property's value. One intent of this design is
* that the notion of the very definition of a property is abstracted
* along with the mechanism for accessing that property.
*/
public abstract class AccessStrategy {
/**
* Get the value from the given instance.
* @param instance
* @return the value
* @throws IllegalArgumentException in case of an error
*/
public abstract Object get(Object instance);
/**
* Get the Java program {@link ElementType} used by this {@link AccessStrategy}
* to determine property values.
* @return ElementType
*/
public abstract ElementType getElementType();
/**
* Get the type of the property
* @return Type
*/
public abstract Type getJavaType();
/**
* Get a name representative of this property.
* @return String
*/
public abstract String getPropertyName();
}