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     */
017    
018    package org.apache.commons.pipeline;
019    
020    
021    /**
022     * Simple factory interface for creating pipelines. This interface is commonly implemented
023     * in different ways to allow creation of a pipeline based upon some external
024     * configuration source instead of in code.
025     */
026    public interface PipelineFactory {
027        /**
028         * Returns a Pipeline created by the factory.
029         * @throws org.apache.commons.pipeline.PipelineCreationException if there is an error creating the pipeline
030         * @return the newly created pipeline
031         */
032        public Pipeline createPipeline() throws PipelineCreationException;
033    }