/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */
package org.apache.commons.configuration2.builder;

import java.util.Map;

/**
 * <p>
 * An interface to be implemented by objects which can be used to parameterize a {@link ConfigurationBuilder}.
 * </p>
 * <p>
 * This interface is part of a Java DSL for creating and initializing builders for specific {@code Configuration}
 * classes. Concrete implementations typically collect a set of related properties for the builder. There will be
 * specific set methods for providing values for these properties. Then, this interface requires a generic
 * {@code getParameters()} method which has to return all property values as a map. When constructing the builder the
 * map is evaluated to define properties of the {@code Configuration} objects to be constructed.
 * </p>
 *
 * @since 2.0
 */
public interface BuilderParameters {
    /**
     * Constant for a prefix for reserved initialization parameter keys. If a parameter was set whose key starts with this
     * prefix, it is filtered out before the initialization of a newly created result object. This mechanism allows
     * implementing classes to store specific configuration data in the parameters map which does not represent a property
     * value for the result object.
     */
    String RESERVED_PARAMETER_PREFIX = "config-";

    /**
     * Gets a map with all parameters defined by this objects. The keys of the map correspond to concrete properties
     * supported by the {@code Configuration} implementation class the builder produces. The values are the corresponding
     * property values. The return value must not be <b>null</b>.
     *
     * @return a map with builder parameters
     */
    Map<String, Object> getParameters();
}
