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.configuration2.builder;
018
019import org.apache.commons.configuration2.ImmutableConfiguration;
020import org.apache.commons.configuration2.event.EventSource;
021import org.apache.commons.configuration2.ex.ConfigurationException;
022
023/**
024 * <p>
025 * Definition of an interface for objects that can create {@link ImmutableConfiguration} or
026 * {@link org.apache.commons.configuration2.Configuration Configuration} objects of a specific type.
027 * </p>
028 * <p>
029 * This interface defines an abstract way of creating a {@code ImmutableConfiguration} object. It does not assume any
030 * specific way of how this is done; this is completely in the responsibility of an implementation class. There is just
031 * a single method that returns the configuration constructed by this builder.
032 * </p>
033 * <p>
034 * Note: {@code ImmutableConfiguration} is just the base interface for all configuration objects. So that the return
035 * type of the {@code getConfiguration()} method is {@code ImmutableConfiguration} does not mean that only immutable
036 * configurations can be created.
037 * </p>
038 *
039 * @since 2.0
040 * @param <T> the concrete type of the {@code ImmutableConfiguration} class produced by this builder
041 */
042public interface ConfigurationBuilder<T extends ImmutableConfiguration> extends EventSource {
043
044    /**
045     * Gets the configuration provided by this builder. An implementation has to perform all necessary steps for creating
046     * and initializing a {@code ImmutableConfiguration} object.
047     *
048     * @return the configuration
049     * @throws ConfigurationException if an error occurs
050     */
051    T getConfiguration() throws ConfigurationException;
052}