IEncodedStorage.java

/*******************************************************************************
 *  Copyright (c) 2004, 2009 IBM Corporation and others.
 *  All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
 *  are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
 *  which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
 *  http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
 * 
 *  Contributors:
 *     IBM Corporation - initial API and implementation
 *******************************************************************************/
package org.eclipse.core.resources;

import org.eclipse.core.runtime.CoreException;

/**
 * A storage that knows how its contents are encoded.
 * 
 * <p>
 * The <code>IEncodedStorage</code> interface extends <code>IStorage</code> in order to provide
 * access to the charset to be used when decoding its contents.
 * </p>
 * <p>
 * Clients may implement this interface.
 * </p>
 * 
 * @since 3.0
 */
public interface IEncodedStorage extends IStorage {
	/**
	 * Returns the name of a charset encoding to be used when decoding this storage's contents into
	 * characters. Returns <code>null</code> if a proper encoding cannot be determined.
	 * <p>
	 * Note that this method does not check whether the result is a supported charset name. Callers
	 * should be prepared to handle <code>UnsupportedEncodingException</code> where this charset is
	 * used.
	 * </p>
	 * 
	 * @return the name of a charset, or <code>null</code>
	 * @exception CoreException if an error happens while determining the charset. See any
	 *                refinements for more information.
	 * @see IStorage#getContents()
	 */
	public String getCharset() throws CoreException;
}