001/*
002 *  Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
003 *  or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
004 *  distributed with this work for additional information
005 *  regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
006 *  to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
007 *  "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
008 *  with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
009 *
010 *        http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
011 *
012 *  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
013 *  software distributed under the License is distributed on an
014 *  "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
015 *  KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
016 *  specific language governing permissions and limitations
017 *  under the License.
018 */
019
020package org.apache.isis.core.metamodel.specloader.collectiontyperegistry;
021
022import org.apache.isis.core.commons.components.ApplicationScopedComponent;
023import org.apache.isis.core.commons.components.Injectable;
024import org.apache.isis.core.metamodel.spec.feature.OneToManyFeature.CollectionSemantics;
025
026/**
027 * Defines the types which are considered to be collections.
028 * 
029 * <p>
030 * In this way there are similarities with the way in which value types are
031 * specified using <tt>@Value</tt>. However, we need to maintain a repository of
032 * these collection types once nominated so that when we introspect classes we
033 * look for collections first, and then properties second.
034 * 
035 * <p>
036 * TODO: plan is to allow new collection types to be installed dynamically,
037 * allowing the domain programmer to declare custom classes to have collection
038 * semantics.
039 */
040public interface CollectionTypeRegistry extends Injectable, ApplicationScopedComponent {
041
042    public boolean isCollectionType(Class<?> cls);
043
044    public boolean isArrayType(Class<?> cls);
045
046    public Class<?>[] getCollectionType();
047
048    public CollectionSemantics semanticsOf(Class<?> cls);
049
050}