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.jxpath;
18
19 import java.beans.PropertyDescriptor;
20 import java.io.Serializable;
21
22 /**
23 * JXPathBeanInfo is similar to {@link java.beans.BeanInfo} in that it describes
24 * properties of a JavaBean class. By default, JXPathBeanInfo classes are
25 * automatically generated by {@link JXPathIntrospector JXPathIntrospector}
26 * based on the java.beans.BeanInfo. As with JavaBeans, the user can supply an
27 * alternative implementation of JXPathBeanInfo for a custom class. The
28 * alternative implementation is located by class name, which is the same as the
29 * name of the class it represents with the suffix "XBeanInfo". So, for
30 * example, if you need to provide an alternative JXPathBeanInfo class for class
31 * "com.foo.Bar", write a class "com.foo.BarXBeanInfo" and make it implement the
32 * JXPathBeanInfo interface.
33 *
34 * @author Dmitri Plotnikov
35 * @version $Revision: 668329 $ $Date: 2008-06-16 23:59:48 +0200 (Mo, 16 Jun 2008) $
36 */
37 public interface JXPathBeanInfo extends Serializable {
38
39 /**
40 * Returns true if objects of this class are treated as atomic
41 * objects which have no properties of their own.
42 * For example, {@link String} and {@link Number} are atomic.
43 * @return boolean
44 */
45 boolean isAtomic();
46
47 /**
48 * Returns true if the objects of this class have dynamic properties
49 * (e.g. java.util.Map). If this method returns true, {@link #getPropertyDescriptors}
50 * should return null and {@link #getDynamicPropertyHandlerClass} should return
51 * a valid class name. An object cannot have both static and dynamic
52 * properties at the same time.
53 * @return boolean
54 */
55 boolean isDynamic();
56
57 /**
58 * Returns a list of property descriptors for the beans described by this
59 * bean info object. Returns null for atomic beans.
60 * @return PropertyDescriptor[]
61 */
62 PropertyDescriptor[] getPropertyDescriptors();
63
64 /**
65 * Returns a PropertyDescriptor for the specified name or null if there
66 * is no such property.
67 * @param propertyName property name
68 * @return PropertyDescriptor
69 */
70 PropertyDescriptor getPropertyDescriptor(String propertyName);
71
72 /**
73 * For dynamic objects, returns the class implementing
74 * the {@link DynamicPropertyHandler} interface. That class can
75 * be used to access dynamic properties.
76 * @return Class
77 */
78 Class getDynamicPropertyHandlerClass();
79 }