IXMLPersistable.java

/*
  IXMLPersistable.java

  (c) 2010-2011 Edward Swartz

  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
 */
package ejs.base.properties;

import org.w3c.dom.Element;

/**
 * @author ejs
 *
 */
public interface IXMLPersistable {
	/** Save the property into the given element.  Children may be created. 
	 * The type of the property should be recreatable from the data in the element
	 * (e.g., a number should be emitted in ASCII so that loadState can re-read it;
	 * or an object should be emitted with a known child element name that
	 * loadState can find.)
	 * */
	void saveState(Element element);
	/** Save the property into the given element.  The property already exists */
	void loadState(Element element);
}