1 /*
2 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
3 * contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
4 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
5 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
6 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
7 * the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
8 *
9 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
10 *
11 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
12 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
13 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
14 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
15 * limitations under the License.
16 */
17 package org.apache.commons.beanutils2;
18
19 import java.beans.IntrospectionException;
20
21 /**
22 * <p>
23 * Definition of an interface for components that can perform introspection on bean classes.
24 * </p>
25 * <p>
26 * Before {@link PropertyUtils} can be used for interaction with a specific Java class, the class's properties have to be determined. This is called
27 * <em>introspection</em> and is initiated automatically on demand. {@code PropertyUtils} does not perform introspection on its own, but delegates this task to
28 * one or more objects implementing this interface. This makes it possible to customize introspection which may be useful for certain code bases using
29 * non-standard conventions for accessing properties.
30 * </p>
31 *
32 * @since 1.9
33 */
34 public interface BeanIntrospector {
35
36 /**
37 * Performs introspection on a Java class. The current class to be inspected can be queried from the passed in {@code IntrospectionContext} object. A
38 * typical implementation has to obtain this class, determine its properties according to the rules it implements, and add them to the passed in context
39 * object.
40 *
41 * @param icontext the context object for interaction with the initiator of the introspection request
42 * @throws IntrospectionException if an error occurs during introspection
43 */
44 void introspect(IntrospectionContext icontext) throws IntrospectionException;
45 }