/*
* Copyright (c) 2012 Data Harmonisation Panel
*
* All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials are made
* available under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as
* published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License,
* or (at your option) any later version.
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
* along with this distribution. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
*
* Contributors:
* HUMBOLDT EU Integrated Project #030962
* Data Harmonisation Panel <http://www.dhpanel.eu>
*/
package eu.esdihumboldt.hale.common.instance.model;
/**
* Filter for {@link Instance}s. Filter implementations should reimplement
* {@link #equals(Object)} and {@link #hashCode()}.
*
* @author Sebastian Reinhardt
* @author Simon Templer
*/
public interface Filter {
/**
* Determines if an instance matches the filter.
*
* @param instance the instance to check the filter against
* @return <code>true</code> if the given instance matches the filter,
* <code>false</code> otherwise
*/
public boolean match(Instance instance);
/*
* XXX it might be a good option to include the information about valid
* instance types in the filter interface, as this would allow an easier
* optimization for filtering instance collections based on types!
*/
// public Set<TypeDefinition> getAllowedTypes();
}