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 package org.apache.commons.id;
18
19 /**
20 * <code>StringIdentifierGenerator</code> defines a simple interface for
21 * String based identifier generation.
22 *
23 * @author Commons-Id team
24 * @version $Id: StringIdentifierGenerator.java 480488 2006-11-29 08:57:26Z bayard $
25 */
26 public interface StringIdentifierGenerator extends IdentifierGenerator {
27
28 /**
29 * Constant representing unlimited identifier length, returned by {@link #maxLength()}
30 * when there is no upper bound to the length of an identifier in the sequence
31 */
32 public static final int INFINITE_MAX_LENGTH = -1;
33
34 /**
35 * Gets the next identifier in the sequence.
36 *
37 * @return the next String identifier in sequence
38 */
39 String nextStringIdentifier();
40
41 /**
42 * Returns the maximum length (number or characters) for an identifier
43 * from this sequence.
44 *
45 * @return the maximum identifier length, or {@link #INFINITE_MAX_LENGTH} if there is no upper bound
46 */
47 long maxLength();
48
49 /**
50 * Returns the minimum length (number of characters) for an identifier
51 * from this sequence.
52 *
53 * @return the minimum identifier length
54 */
55 long minLength();
56 }