/*
* Copyright 2003-2012 JetBrains s.r.o.
*
* Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
* you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
* You may obtain a copy of the License at
*
* http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
*
* Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
* distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
* WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
* See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
* limitations under the License.
*/
package org.jetbrains.mps.openapi.model;
import org.jetbrains.annotations.Nullable;
import org.jetbrains.mps.annotations.Immutable;
import org.jetbrains.mps.openapi.language.SReferenceLink;
/**
* Represents reference between nodes. Nodes are organized in AST with references going across the tree hierarchy
* and connecting nodes from different branches or trees.
*/
@Immutable
public interface SReference {
@Deprecated
String getRole();
/**
* Gets the associated Link - an abstract meta-definition for the reference
*/
SReferenceLink getLink();
/**
* Containing node for this reference.
*/
SNode getSourceNode();
/**
* Resolves the target node in the containing repository. This operation is not guaranteed to be fast.
* It may require to traverse the repository, compute types for some nodes or execute code provided by the language-designer.
*
* @return the node behind the reference, or null if something is broken in the repository
*/
SNode getTargetNode();
/**
* Builds and returns a reference to the target node. Tries to avoid lengthy computations whenever possible.
* Does exactly the same as getTargetNode().getReference(), but probably faster.
*/
SNodeReference getTargetNodeReference();
/**
* The following two operations are defined only for references which can instantly respond to the request (e.g. they store
* the target model reference and/or node id as a part of the reference).
*
* @return target model reference (if available)
*/
@Nullable
SModelReference getTargetSModelReference();
@Nullable
SNodeId getTargetNodeId();
}