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.graph.properties; 023 024 import java.io.Serializable; 025 import net.jcip.annotations.Immutable; 026 import org.jboss.dna.common.text.TextEncoder; 027 028 /** 029 * A representation of a reference to another node. Node references may not necessarily resolve to an existing node. 030 * @author Randall Hauch 031 */ 032 @Immutable 033 public interface Reference extends Comparable<Reference>, Serializable { 034 035 /** 036 * Get the string form of the Reference. The {@link Path#DEFAULT_ENCODER default encoder} is used to encode characters in the 037 * reference. 038 * @return the encoded string 039 * @see #getString(TextEncoder) 040 */ 041 public String getString(); 042 043 /** 044 * Get the encoded string form of the Reference, using the supplied encoder to encode characters in the reference. 045 * @param encoder the encoder to use, or null if the {@link Path#DEFAULT_ENCODER default encoder} should be used 046 * @return the encoded string 047 * @see #getString() 048 */ 049 public String getString( TextEncoder encoder ); 050 051 }