001 /* 002 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one 003 * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file 004 * distributed with this work for additional information 005 * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file 006 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the 007 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance 008 * with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at 009 * 010 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 011 * 012 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, 013 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an 014 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY 015 * KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the 016 * specific language governing permissions and limitations 017 * under the License. 018 */ 019 020 package javax.mail; 021 022 import java.io.Serializable; 023 024 /** 025 * This abstract class models the addresses in a message. 026 * Addresses are Serializable so that they may be serialized along with other search terms. 027 * 028 * @version $Rev: 920714 $ $Date: 2010-03-09 01:55:49 -0500 (Tue, 09 Mar 2010) $ 029 */ 030 public abstract class Address implements Serializable { 031 032 private static final long serialVersionUID = -5822459626751992278L; 033 034 /** 035 * Subclasses must provide a suitable implementation of equals(). 036 * 037 * @param object the object to compare t 038 * @return true if the subclass determines the other object is equal to this Address 039 */ 040 public abstract boolean equals(Object object); 041 042 /** 043 * Return a String that identifies this address type. 044 * @return the type of this address 045 */ 046 public abstract String getType(); 047 048 /** 049 * Subclasses must provide a suitable representation of their address. 050 * @return a representation of an Address as a String 051 */ 052 public abstract String toString(); 053 }