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.betwixt.io;
18
19
20 /** <p>Interface allowing pluggable <code>ID</code> attribute value generators.</p>
21 *
22 * <p> <code>IDGenerator</code>'s are used to generate <code>ID</code>
23 * attribute values by <code>BeanWriter</code>.
24 * A user can specify the generation mechanism by passing an implementation to
25 * {@link BeanWriter#setIdGenerator}.</p>
26 *
27 * <p>Standard implementations are included with that supply random and sequantial values.</p>
28 *
29 * @author <a href="mailto:rdonkin@apache.org">Robert Burrell Donkin</a>
30 * @version $Revision: 438373 $
31 */
32 public interface IDGenerator {
33
34 /**
35 * Get the last <code>ID</code> value generated.
36 *
37 * @return the last value generated
38 */
39 public String getLastId();
40
41 /**
42 * Generate a new <code>ID</code> attribute value.
43 *
44 * @return next value
45 */
46 public String nextId();
47 }