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1   /*
2    * Copyright 2002,2004 The Apache Software Foundation.
3    *
4    * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
5    * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
6    * You may obtain a copy of the License at
7    *
8    *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
9    *
10   * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
11   * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
12   * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
13   * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
14   * limitations under the License.
15   */
16  
17  package org.apache.commons.jelly;
18  
19  /*** 
20   * <p><code>DynaTag</code> represents a Jelly custom tag which
21   * can take its attributes dynamically and store them in some data structure.
22   * Typically a DynaTag may use either a Map or a DynaBean to implement itself
23   * which avoids writing explicit getter and setter methods for each possible attribute.
24   * </p>
25   * <p>
26   * This kind of tag can be extremely useful when making HTML-like tags which
27   * generally output all the attributes which are used in the markup, except
28   * one or two special attributes are used, all others pass through.</p>
29   *
30   * @author <a href="mailto:jstrachan@apache.org">James Strachan</a>
31   * @version $Revision: 155420 $
32   */
33  
34  public interface DynaTag extends Tag {
35  
36      /*** Sets an attribute value of this tag before the tag is invoked
37       */
38      public void setAttribute(String name, Object value) throws JellyTagException;
39  
40      /***
41       * @return the type of the given attribute. By default just return
42       * Object.class if this is not known.
43       * If this method returns Expression.class then the expression will not
44       * be evaluated and just passed in as the attribute value.
45       */
46      public Class getAttributeType(String name) throws JellyTagException;
47  }