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.beanutils;
18
19 /**
20 * <p>A <strong>DynaClass</strong> is a simulation of the functionality of
21 * <code>java.lang.Class</code> for classes implementing the
22 * <code>DynaBean</code> interface. DynaBean instances that share the same
23 * DynaClass all have the same set of available properties, along with any
24 * associated data types, read-only states, and write-only states.</p>
25 *
26 * @version $Id$
27 */
28
29 public interface DynaClass {
30
31
32 /**
33 * Return the name of this DynaClass (analogous to the
34 * <code>getName()</code> method of <code>java.lang.Class</code), which
35 * allows the same <code>DynaClass</code> implementation class to support
36 * different dynamic classes, with different sets of properties.
37 *
38 * @return the name of the DynaClass
39 */
40 public String getName();
41
42
43 /**
44 * Return a property descriptor for the specified property, if it exists;
45 * otherwise, return <code>null</code>.
46 *
47 * @param name Name of the dynamic property for which a descriptor
48 * is requested
49 * @return The descriptor for the specified property
50 *
51 * @throws IllegalArgumentException if no property name is specified
52 */
53 public DynaProperty getDynaProperty(String name);
54
55
56 /**
57 * <p>Return an array of <code>ProperyDescriptors</code> for the properties
58 * currently defined in this DynaClass. If no properties are defined, a
59 * zero-length array will be returned.</p>
60 *
61 * <p><strong>FIXME</strong> - Should we really be implementing
62 * <code>getBeanInfo()</code> instead, which returns property descriptors
63 * and a bunch of other stuff?</p>
64 *
65 * @return the set of properties for this DynaClass
66 */
67 public DynaProperty[] getDynaProperties();
68
69
70 /**
71 * Instantiate and return a new DynaBean instance, associated
72 * with this DynaClass.
73 *
74 * @return A new <code>DynaBean</code> instance
75 *
76 * @throws IllegalAccessException if the Class or the appropriate
77 * constructor is not accessible
78 * @throws InstantiationException if this Class represents an abstract
79 * class, an array class, a primitive type, or void; or if instantiation
80 * fails for some other reason
81 */
82 public DynaBean newInstance()
83 throws IllegalAccessException, InstantiationException;
84
85
86 }