001    package 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    
022    import java.lang.annotation.Annotation;
023    import java.lang.reflect.AnnotatedElement;
024    
025    /**
026     * An object capable of providing instances of {@link AnnotationHandler}.
027     *
028     * @since 3.0
029     */
030    public 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    }