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
019/**
020 * A generic mechanism for accessing collections of name/value pairs.
021 * Examples of such collections are HashMap, Properties,
022 * ServletContext.  In order to add support for a new such collection
023 * type to JXPath, perform the following two steps:
024 * <ol>
025 * <li>Build an implementation of the DynamicPropertyHandler interface
026 * for the desired collection type.</li>
027 * <li>Invoke the static method {@link JXPathIntrospector#registerDynamicClass
028 * JXPathIntrospector.registerDynamicClass(class, handlerClass)}</li>
029 * </ol>
030 * JXPath allows access to dynamic properties using these three formats:
031 * <ul>
032 * <li><code>"myMap/myKey"</code></li>
033 * <li><code>"myMap[@name = 'myKey']"</code></li>
034 * <li><code>"myMap[name(.) = 'myKey']"</code></li>
035 * </ul>
036 *
037 * @author Dmitri Plotnikov
038 * @version $Revision: 652845 $ $Date: 2008-05-02 19:46:46 +0200 (Fr, 02 Mai 2008) $
039 */
040public interface DynamicPropertyHandler {
041
042    /**
043     * Returns a list of dynamic property names for the supplied object.
044     * @param object to inspect
045     * @return String[]
046     */
047    String[] getPropertyNames(Object object);
048
049    /**
050     * Returns the value of the specified dynamic property.
051     * @param object to search
052     * @param propertyName to retrieve
053     * @return Object
054     */
055    Object getProperty(Object object, String propertyName);
056
057    /**
058     * Modifies the value of the specified dynamic property.
059     * @param object to modify
060     * @param propertyName to modify
061     * @param value to set
062     */
063    void setProperty(Object object, String propertyName, Object value);
064}