/**
* Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
* or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file
* distributed with this work for additional information
* regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file
* to you 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.apache.hadoop.io;
/**
* A {@link Writable} which is also {@link Comparable}.
*
* <p><code>WritableComparable</code>s can be compared to each other, typically
* via <code>Comparator</code>s. Any type which is to be used as a
* <code>key</code> in the Hadoop Map-Reduce framework should implement this
* interface.</p>
*
* <p>Example:</p>
* <p><blockquote><pre>
* public class MyWritableComparable implements WritableComparable {
* // Some data
* private int counter;
* private long timestamp;
*
* public void write(DataOutput out) throws IOException {
* out.writeInt(counter);
* out.writeLong(timestamp);
* }
*
* public void readFields(DataInput in) throws IOException {
* counter = in.readInt();
* timestamp = in.readLong();
* }
*
* public int compareTo(MyWritableComparable w) {
* int thisValue = this.value;
* int thatValue = ((IntWritable)o).value;
* return (thisValue < thatValue ? -1 : (thisValue==thatValue ? 0 : 1));
* }
* }
* </pre></blockquote></p>
*/
public interface WritableComparable<T> extends Writable, Comparable<T> {
}