001/*
002 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
003 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
004 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
005 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
006 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
007 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
008 *
009 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
010 *
011 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
012 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
013 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
014 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
015 * limitations under the License.
016 */
017package org.apache.commons.jxpath;
018
019import java.io.Serializable;
020
021/**
022 * A Container is an object implementing an indirection
023 * mechanism transparent to JXPath.  For example, if property
024 * "foo" of the context node has a Container as its value,
025 * the XPath "foo" will produce the contents of that Container,
026 * rather than the container itself.
027 *
028 * @author Dmitri Plotnikov
029 * @version $Revision: 652925 $ $Date: 2008-05-03 00:05:41 +0200 (Sa, 03 Mai 2008) $
030 */
031public interface Container extends Serializable {
032
033    /**
034     * Returns the contained value.
035     * @return Object value
036     */
037    Object getValue();
038
039    /**
040     * Modifies the value contained by this container.  May throw
041     * UnsupportedOperationException.
042     * @param value Object value to set.
043     */
044    void setValue(Object value);
045}