/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */

package org.apache.commons.jxpath;

import java.beans.PropertyDescriptor;
import java.io.Serializable;

/**
 * JXPathBeanInfo is similar to {@link java.beans.BeanInfo} in that it describes properties of a JavaBean class. By default, JXPathBeanInfo classes are
 * automatically generated by {@link JXPathIntrospector JXPathIntrospector} based on the java.beans.BeanInfo. As with JavaBeans, the user can supply an
 * alternative implementation of JXPathBeanInfo for a custom class. The alternative implementation is located by class name, which is the same as the name of
 * 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",
 * write a class "com.foo.BarXBeanInfo" and make it implement the JXPathBeanInfo interface.
 */
public interface JXPathBeanInfo extends Serializable {

    /**
     * Gets the class implementing the {@link DynamicPropertyHandler} interface for dynamic objects. That class can be used to access dynamic properties.
     *
     * @return Class The class implementing the {@link DynamicPropertyHandler} interface.
     */
    Class getDynamicPropertyHandlerClass();

    /**
     * Gets a PropertyDescriptor for the specified name or null if there is no such property.
     *
     * @param propertyName property name
     * @return PropertyDescriptor
     */
    PropertyDescriptor getPropertyDescriptor(String propertyName);

    /**
     * Gets a list of property descriptors for the beans described by this bean info object. Returns null for atomic beans.
     *
     * @return PropertyDescriptor[]
     */
    PropertyDescriptor[] getPropertyDescriptors();

    /**
     * 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}
     * are atomic.
     *
     * @return Tests whether objects of this class are treated as atomic objects.
     */
    boolean isAtomic();

    /**
     * Tests whether the objects of this class have dynamic properties (e.g. java.util.Map). If this method returns true, {@link #getPropertyDescriptors} should
     * return null and {@link #getDynamicPropertyHandlerClass} should return a valid class name. An object cannot have both static and dynamic properties at the
     * same time.
     *
     * @return whether the objects of this class have dynamic properties.
     */
    boolean isDynamic();
}
