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* Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
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* contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
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* this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
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* The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
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* (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
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* the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
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* http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
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* Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
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* distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
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* WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
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* See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
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* limitations under the License.
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package org.apache.commons.configuration.beanutils;
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* Definition of an interface for declaring a bean in a configuration file.
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* Commons Configurations allows to define beans (i.e. simple Java objects) in
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* configuration files, which can be created at runtime. This is especially
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* useful if you program against interfaces and want to define the concrete
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* implementation class is a configuration file.
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* This interface defines methods for retrieving all information about a bean
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* that should be created from a configuration file, e.g. the bean's properties
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* or the factory to use for creating the instance. With different
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* implementations different "layouts" of bean declarations can be
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* supported. For instance if an XML configuration file is used, all features of
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* XML (e.g. attributes, nested elements) can be used to define the bean. In a
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* properties file the declaration format is more limited. The purpose of this
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* interface is to abstract from the concrete declaration format.
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* @author Oliver Heger
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* @version $Id: BeanDeclaration.java 439648 2006-09-02 20:42:10Z oheger $
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public interface BeanDeclaration
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* Returns the name of the <code>BeanFactory</code> that should be used
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* for creating the bean instance. This can be <b>null</b>, then a default
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* factory will be used.
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* @return the name of the bean factory
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String getBeanFactoryName();
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* Here an arbitrary object can be returned that will be passed to the bean
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* factory. Its meaning is not further specified. The purpose of this
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* additional parameter is to support a further configuration of the bean
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* factory that can be placed directly at the bean declaration.
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* @return a parameter for the bean factory
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Object getBeanFactoryParameter();
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* Returns the name of the bean class, from which an instance is to be
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* created. This value must be defined unless a default class is provided
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* for the bean creation operation.
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* @return the name of the bean class
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String getBeanClassName();
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* Returns a map with properties that should be initialized on the newly
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* created bean. The map's keys are the names of the properties; the
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* corresponding values are the properties' values. The return value can be
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* <b>null</b> if no properties should be set.
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* @return a map with properties to be initialized
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Map getBeanProperties();
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* Returns a map with declarations for beans that should be set as
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* properties of the newly created bean. This allows for complex
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* initialization szenarios: a bean for a bean that contains complex
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* properties (e.g. other beans) can have nested declarations for defining
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* these complex properties. The returned map's key are the names of the
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* properties to initialze. The values are <code>BeanDeclaration</code>
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* implementations. They will be treated like this declaration (in a
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* recursive manner), and the resulting beans are assigned to the
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* corresponding properties.
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* @return a map with nested bean declarations
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Map getNestedBeanDeclarations();