001/*
002 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
003 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
004 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
005 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
006 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
007 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
008 *
009 *      https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
010 *
011 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
012 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
013 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
014 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
015 * limitations under the License.
016 */
017package org.apache.commons.beanutils;
018
019/**
020 * <p>A <strong>DynaClass</strong> is a simulation of the functionality of
021 * <code>java.lang.Class</code> for classes implementing the
022 * <code>DynaBean</code> interface.  DynaBean instances that share the same
023 * DynaClass all have the same set of available properties, along with any
024 * associated data types, read-only states, and write-only states.</p>
025 *
026 */
027public interface DynaClass {
028
029    /**
030     * <p>Return an array of <code>ProperyDescriptors</code> for the properties
031     * currently defined in this DynaClass.  If no properties are defined, a
032     * zero-length array will be returned.</p>
033     *
034     * <p><strong>FIXME</strong> - Should we really be implementing
035     * <code>getBeanInfo()</code> instead, which returns property descriptors
036     * and a bunch of other stuff?</p>
037     *
038     * @return the set of properties for this DynaClass
039     */
040    DynaProperty[] getDynaProperties();
041
042    /**
043     * Return a property descriptor for the specified property, if it exists;
044     * otherwise, return <code>null</code>.
045     *
046     * @param name Name of the dynamic property for which a descriptor
047     *  is requested
048     * @return The descriptor for the specified property
049     * @throws IllegalArgumentException if no property name is specified
050     */
051    DynaProperty getDynaProperty(String name);
052
053    /**
054     * Return the name of this DynaClass (analogous to the
055     * <code>getName()</code> method of <code>java.lang.Class</code>), which
056     * allows the same <code>DynaClass</code> implementation class to support
057     * different dynamic classes, with different sets of properties.
058     *
059     * @return the name of the DynaClass
060     */
061    String getName();
062
063    /**
064     * Instantiate and return a new DynaBean instance, associated
065     * with this DynaClass.
066     *
067     * @return A new <code>DynaBean</code> instance
068     * @throws IllegalAccessException if the Class or the appropriate
069     *  constructor is not accessible
070     * @throws InstantiationException if this Class represents an abstract
071     *  class, an array class, a primitive type, or void; or if instantiation
072     *  fails for some other reason
073     */
074    DynaBean newInstance() throws IllegalAccessException, InstantiationException;
075
076}