001package org.apache.commons.digester3.annotations;
002
003/*
004 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
005 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
006 * distributed with this work for additional information
007 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
008 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
009 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
010 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
011 *
012 *   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
013 *
014 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
015 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
016 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
017 * KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
018 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
019 * under the License.
020 */
021
022import java.lang.annotation.Annotation;
023import java.lang.reflect.AnnotatedElement;
024
025/**
026 * An object capable of providing instances of {@link AnnotationHandler}.
027 *
028 * @since 3.0
029 */
030public interface AnnotationHandlerFactory
031{
032
033    /**
034     * Return an instance of the specified type.
035     *
036     * @param <H> The {@link AnnotationHandler} type has to be created
037     * @param type the class of the object to be returned.
038     * @return an instance of the specified class.
039     * @throws Exception if any error occurs while creating the {@link AnnotationHandler} instance.
040     */
041    <H extends AnnotationHandler<? extends Annotation, ? extends AnnotatedElement>> H newInstance( Class<H> type )
042        throws Exception;
043
044}