001// Copyright 2004, 2005 The Apache Software Foundation
002//
003// Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
004// you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
005// You may obtain a copy of the License at
006//
007//     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
008//
009// Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
010// distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
011// WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
012// See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
013// limitations under the License.
014
015package org.apache.hivemind.service;
016
017import org.apache.hivemind.Location;
018import org.apache.hivemind.internal.Module;
019
020/**
021 * A service which can provide an object value for the <code>indirect</code>
022 * translator.
023 *
024 * @author Howard Lewis Ship
025 */
026public interface ObjectProvider
027{
028    /**
029     * Invoked by the translator to provide the value.
030     * @param contributingModule the module which contributed to the locator
031     * @param propertyType the expected type of property
032     * @param locator a string that should be meaningful to this provider. It is the suffix of
033     * the original input value provided to the translator, after the selector prefix
034     * (used to choose a provider) was stripped.
035     * @param location the location of the input value (from which the locator was extracted). Used
036     * for error reporting, or to set the location of created objects.
037     */
038    public Object provideObject(
039        Module contributingModule,
040        Class propertyType,
041        String locator,
042        Location location);
043}