/*
* 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.beanutils;
/**
* <p>A <strong>DynaClass</strong> is a simulation of the functionality of
* <code>java.lang.Class</code> for classes implementing the
* <code>DynaBean</code> interface. DynaBean instances that share the same
* DynaClass all have the same set of available properties, along with any
* associated data types, read-only states, and write-only states.</p>
*
* @author Craig McClanahan
* @author Michael Smith
* @author Paulo Gaspar
* @version $Revision: 555824 $ $Date: 2007-07-13 01:27:15 +0100 (Fri, 13 Jul 2007) $
*/
public interface DynaClass {
/**
* Return the name of this DynaClass (analogous to the
* <code>getName()</code> method of <code>java.lang.Class</code), which
* allows the same <code>DynaClass</code> implementation class to support
* different dynamic classes, with different sets of properties.
*
* @return the name of the DynaClass
*/
public String getName();
/**
* Return a property descriptor for the specified property, if it exists;
* otherwise, return <code>null</code>.
*
* @param name Name of the dynamic property for which a descriptor
* is requested
* @return The descriptor for the specified property
*
* @exception IllegalArgumentException if no property name is specified
*/
public DynaProperty getDynaProperty(String name);
/**
* <p>Return an array of <code>ProperyDescriptors</code> for the properties
* currently defined in this DynaClass. If no properties are defined, a
* zero-length array will be returned.</p>
*
* <p><strong>FIXME</strong> - Should we really be implementing
* <code>getBeanInfo()</code> instead, which returns property descriptors
* and a bunch of other stuff?</p>
*
* @return the set of properties for this DynaClass
*/
public DynaProperty[] getDynaProperties();
/**
* Instantiate and return a new DynaBean instance, associated
* with this DynaClass.
*
* @return A new <code>DynaBean</code> instance
*
* @exception IllegalAccessException if the Class or the appropriate
* constructor is not accessible
* @exception InstantiationException if this Class represents an abstract
* class, an array class, a primitive type, or void; or if instantiation
* fails for some other reason
*/
public DynaBean newInstance()
throws IllegalAccessException, InstantiationException;
}
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