001    /*
002     * JBoss, Home of Professional Open Source.
003     * Copyright 2008, Red Hat Middleware LLC, and individual contributors
004     * as indicated by the @author tags. See the copyright.txt file in the
005     * distribution for a full listing of individual contributors. 
006     *
007     * This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
008     * under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as
009     * published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of
010     * the License, or (at your option) any later version.
011     *
012     * This software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
013     * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
014     * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
015     * Lesser General Public License for more details.
016     *
017     * You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
018     * License along with this software; if not, write to the Free
019     * Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA
020     * 02110-1301 USA, or see the FSF site: http://www.fsf.org.
021     */
022    package org.jboss.dna.common.component;
023    
024    /**
025     * The interface for a DNA component, which sequences nodes and their content to extract additional information from the
026     * information.
027     * <p>
028     * Implementations must provide a no-argument constructor.
029     * </p>
030     * @author Randall Hauch
031     * @param <T> the type of configuration
032     */
033    public interface Component<T extends ComponentConfig> {
034    
035        /**
036         * This method allows the implementation to initialize and configure itself using the supplied {@link ComponentConfig}
037         * information, and is called prior to any other class to this object. When this method is called, the implementation must
038         * maintain a reference to the supplied configuration (which should then be returned in {@link #getConfiguration()}.
039         * @param configuration the configuration for the component
040         */
041        void setConfiguration( T configuration );
042    
043        /**
044         * Return the configuration for this component, as supplied to the last {@link #setConfiguration(ComponentConfig)} invocation.
045         * @return the configuration, or null if not yet configured
046         */
047        T getConfiguration();
048    
049    }