1 /*
2 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
3 * contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
4 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
5 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
6 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
7 * the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
8 *
9 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
10 *
11 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
12 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
13 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
14 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
15 * limitations under the License.
16 */
17
18 package org.apache.commons.jxpath;
19
20 import java.beans.PropertyDescriptor;
21 import java.io.Serializable;
22
23 /**
24 * JXPathBeanInfo is similar to {@link java.beans.BeanInfo} in that it describes properties of a JavaBean class. By default, JXPathBeanInfo classes are
25 * automatically generated by {@link JXPathIntrospector JXPathIntrospector} based on the java.beans.BeanInfo. As with JavaBeans, the user can supply an
26 * alternative implementation of JXPathBeanInfo for a custom class. The alternative implementation is located by class name, which is the same as the name of
27 * the class it represents with the suffix "XBeanInfo". So, for example, if you need to provide an alternative JXPathBeanInfo class for class "com.foo.Bar",
28 * write a class "com.foo.BarXBeanInfo" and make it implement the JXPathBeanInfo interface.
29 */
30 public interface JXPathBeanInfo extends Serializable {
31
32 /**
33 * Gets the class implementing the {@link DynamicPropertyHandler} interface for dynamic objects. That class can be used to access dynamic properties.
34 *
35 * @return Class The class implementing the {@link DynamicPropertyHandler} interface.
36 */
37 Class getDynamicPropertyHandlerClass();
38
39 /**
40 * Gets a PropertyDescriptor for the specified name or null if there is no such property.
41 *
42 * @param propertyName property name
43 * @return PropertyDescriptor
44 */
45 PropertyDescriptor getPropertyDescriptor(String propertyName);
46
47 /**
48 * Gets a list of property descriptors for the beans described by this bean info object. Returns null for atomic beans.
49 *
50 * @return PropertyDescriptor[]
51 */
52 PropertyDescriptor[] getPropertyDescriptors();
53
54 /**
55 * Tests whether objects of this class are treated as atomic objects which have no properties of their own. For example, {@link String} and {@link Number}
56 * are atomic.
57 *
58 * @return Tests whether objects of this class are treated as atomic objects.
59 */
60 boolean isAtomic();
61
62 /**
63 * Tests whether the objects of this class have dynamic properties (e.g. java.util.Map). If this method returns true, {@link #getPropertyDescriptors} should
64 * return null and {@link #getDynamicPropertyHandlerClass} should return a valid class name. An object cannot have both static and dynamic properties at the
65 * same time.
66 *
67 * @return whether the objects of this class have dynamic properties.
68 */
69 boolean isDynamic();
70 }