    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.beanutils2;
    018
    019import java.beans.IntrospectionException;
    020
    021/**
    022 * <p>
    023 * Definition of an interface for components that can perform introspection on bean classes.
    024 * </p>
    025 * <p>
    026 * Before {@link PropertyUtils} can be used for interaction with a specific Java class, the class's properties have to be determined. This is called
    027 * <em>introspection</em> and is initiated automatically on demand. {@code PropertyUtils} does not perform introspection on its own, but delegates this task to
    028 * one or more objects implementing this interface. This makes it possible to customize introspection which may be useful for certain code bases using
    029 * non-standard conventions for accessing properties.
    030 * </p>
    031 *
    032 * @since 1.9
    033 */
    034public interface BeanIntrospector {
    035
    036    /**
    037     * Performs introspection on a Java class. The current class to be inspected can be queried from the passed in {@code IntrospectionContext} object. A
    038     * typical implementation has to obtain this class, determine its properties according to the rules it implements, and add them to the passed in context
    039     * object.
    040     *
    041     * @param icontext the context object for interaction with the initiator of the introspection request
    042     * @throws IntrospectionException if an error occurs during introspection
    043     */
    044    void introspect(IntrospectionContext icontext) throws IntrospectionException;
    045}