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 */
017package org.apache.commons.beanutils;
018
019/**
020 * <p>A <strong>DynaClass</strong> is a simulation of the functionality of
021 * <code>java.lang.Class</code> for classes implementing the
022 * <code>DynaBean</code> interface.  DynaBean instances that share the same
023 * DynaClass all have the same set of available properties, along with any
024 * associated data types, read-only states, and write-only states.</p>
025 *
026 * @version $Id$
027 */
028
029public interface DynaClass {
030
031
032    /**
033     * Return the name of this DynaClass (analogous to the
034     * <code>getName()</code> method of <code>java.lang.Class</code), which
035     * allows the same <code>DynaClass</code> implementation class to support
036     * different dynamic classes, with different sets of properties.
037     *
038     * @return the name of the DynaClass
039     */
040    public String getName();
041
042
043    /**
044     * Return a property descriptor for the specified property, if it exists;
045     * otherwise, return <code>null</code>.
046     *
047     * @param name Name of the dynamic property for which a descriptor
048     *  is requested
049     * @return The descriptor for the specified property
050     *
051     * @throws IllegalArgumentException if no property name is specified
052     */
053    public DynaProperty getDynaProperty(String name);
054
055
056    /**
057     * <p>Return an array of <code>ProperyDescriptors</code> for the properties
058     * currently defined in this DynaClass.  If no properties are defined, a
059     * zero-length array will be returned.</p>
060     *
061     * <p><strong>FIXME</strong> - Should we really be implementing
062     * <code>getBeanInfo()</code> instead, which returns property descriptors
063     * and a bunch of other stuff?</p>
064     *
065     * @return the set of properties for this DynaClass
066     */
067    public DynaProperty[] getDynaProperties();
068
069
070    /**
071     * Instantiate and return a new DynaBean instance, associated
072     * with this DynaClass.
073     *
074     * @return A new <code>DynaBean</code> instance
075     *
076     * @throws IllegalAccessException if the Class or the appropriate
077     *  constructor is not accessible
078     * @throws InstantiationException if this Class represents an abstract
079     *  class, an array class, a primitive type, or void; or if instantiation
080     *  fails for some other reason
081     */
082    public DynaBean newInstance()
083            throws IllegalAccessException, InstantiationException;
084
085
086}