    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.configuration2.builder;
    018
    019import org.apache.commons.configuration2.ImmutableConfiguration;
    020import org.apache.commons.configuration2.event.EventSource;
    021import org.apache.commons.configuration2.ex.ConfigurationException;
    022
    023/**
    024 * <p>
    025 * Definition of an interface for objects that can create {@link ImmutableConfiguration}
    026 * or {@link org.apache.commons.configuration2.Configuration Configuration} objects of a
    027 * specific type.
    028 * </p>
    029 * <p>
    030 * This interface defines an abstract way of creating a {@code ImmutableConfiguration}
    031 * object. It does not assume any specific way of how this is done; this is
    032 * completely in the responsibility of an implementation class. There is just a
    033 * single method that returns the configuration constructed by this builder.
    034 * </p>
    035 * <p>
    036 * Note: {@code ImmutableConfiguration} is just the base interface for all configuration
    037 * objects. So that the return type of the {@code getConfiguration()} method is
    038 * {@code ImmutableConfiguration} does not mean that only immutable configurations can
    039 * be created.
    040 * </p>
    041 *
    042 * @since 2.0
    043 * @param <T> the concrete type of the {@code ImmutableConfiguration} class produced by
    044 *        this builder
    045 */
    046public interface ConfigurationBuilder<T extends ImmutableConfiguration> extends EventSource
    047{
    048    /**
    049     * Returns the configuration provided by this builder. An implementation has
    050     * to perform all necessary steps for creating and initializing a
    051     * {@code ImmutableConfiguration} object.
    052     *
    053     * @return the configuration
    054     * @throws ConfigurationException if an error occurs
    055     */
    056    T getConfiguration() throws ConfigurationException;
    057}