    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 *      http://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
    019import java.beans.IntrospectionException;
    020
    021/**
    022 * <p>
    023 * Definition of an interface for components that can perform introspection on
    024 * bean classes.
    025 * </p>
    026 * <p>
    027 * Before {@link PropertyUtils} can be used for interaction with a specific Java
    028 * class, the class's properties have to be determined. This is called
    029 * <em>introspection</em> and is initiated automatically on demand.
    030 * <code>PropertyUtils</code> does not perform introspection on its own, but
    031 * delegates this task to one or more objects implementing this interface. This
    032 * makes it possible to customize introspection which may be useful for certain
    033 * code bases using non-standard conventions for accessing properties.
    034 * </p>
    035 *
    036 * @since 1.9
    037 */
    038public interface BeanIntrospector {
    039    /**
    040     * Performs introspection on a Java class. The current class to be inspected
    041     * can be queried from the passed in <code>IntrospectionContext</code>
    042     * object. A typical implementation has to obtain this class, determine its
    043     * properties according to the rules it implements, and add them to the
    044     * passed in context object.
    045     *
    046     * @param icontext the context object for interaction with the initiator of
    047     *        the introspection request
    048     * @throws IntrospectionException if an error occurs during introspection
    049     */
    050    void introspect(IntrospectionContext icontext)
    051            throws IntrospectionException;
    052}