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
018package org.apache.commons.jxpath.ri.model;
019
020import java.util.Locale;
021
022import org.apache.commons.jxpath.ri.QName;
023
024/**
025 * Creates NodePointers for objects of a certain type. NodePointerFactories are ordered according to the values returned by the "getOrder" method and always
026 * queried in that order.
027 */
028public interface NodePointerFactory {
029
030    /**
031     * Create a NodePointer for the supplied child object.
032     *
033     * @param parent parent node
034     * @param qName  node name
035     * @param object child object
036     * @return null if this factory does not recognize objects of the supplied type.
037     */
038    NodePointer createNodePointer(NodePointer parent, QName qName, Object object);
039
040    /**
041     * Create a NodePointer for the supplied object. The node will represent the "root" object for a path.
042     *
043     * @param qName  node name
044     * @param object child object
045     * @param locale Locale
046     * @return null if this factory does not recognize objects of the supplied type.
047     */
048    NodePointer createNodePointer(QName qName, Object object, Locale locale);
049
050    /**
051     * The factory order number determines its position between other factories.
052     *
053     * @return int order
054     */
055    int getOrder();
056}