/*
 * 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.cocoon;

import java.util.Map;

import org.apache.avalon.framework.component.Component;
import org.apache.cocoon.components.pipeline.ProcessingPipeline;
import org.apache.cocoon.environment.Environment;

/**
 *
 * @author <a href="mailto:pier@apache.org">Pierpaolo Fumagalli</a>
 *         (Apache Software Foundation)
 * @author <a href="mailto:cziegeler@apache.org">Carsten Ziegeler</a>
 * @version CVS $Id$
 */
public interface Processor extends Component {

    String ROLE = Processor.class.getName();

    /**
     * Process the given <code>Environment</code> producing the output.
     * @return If the processing is successfull <code>true</code> is returned.
     *         If no match is found in the sitemap <code>false</code>
     *         is returned.
     * @throws ResourceNotFoundException If a sitemap component tries
     *                                   to access a resource which can not
     *                                   be found, e.g. the generator
     *         ConnectionResetException  If the connection was reset
     */
    boolean process(Environment environment)
    throws Exception;

    /**
     * Process the given <code>Environment</code> to assemble
     * a <code>ProcessingPipeline</code>.
     * @since 2.1
     */
    ProcessingPipeline buildPipeline(Environment environment)
    throws Exception;

    /**
     * Get the sitemap component configurations
     * @since 2.1
     */
    Map getComponentConfigurations();

    /**
     * Get the root processor parent of this processor.
     *
     * @since 2.1.1
     */
    Processor getRootProcessor();
}