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 }