/*
* 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.isis.core.metamodel.spec.feature;
import org.apache.isis.core.metamodel.facetapi.FeatureType;
import org.apache.isis.core.metamodel.spec.ObjectSpecification;
import org.apache.isis.core.metamodel.spec.Specification;
/**
* A specification representing a non-{@link FeatureType#OBJECT object}, that
* therefore has an underlying type (the type of the property, collection)
*
* <p>
* For a property or action parameter, is the type. For a collection is the
* element type. For an action it is always <tt>null</tt>.
*/
public interface ObjectFeature extends Specification {
/**
* Returns the identifier of the member, which must not change. This should
* be all camel-case with no spaces: so if the member is called 'Return
* Date' then a suitable id would be 'returnDate'.
*/
String getId();
/**
* Return the name for this member - the field or action. This is based on
* the name of this member.
*
* @see #getIdentifier()
*/
String getName();
/**
* Returns a description of how the member is used - this complements the
* help text.
*
* @see #getHelp()
*/
@Override
String getDescription();
/**
* The specification of the underlying type.
*
* <p>
* For example:
* <ul>
* <li>for a {@link OneToOneAssociation property}, will return the
* {@link ObjectSpecification} of the type that the accessor returns.
* <li>for a {@link OneToManyAssociation collection} it will be the type of
* element the collection holds (not the type of collection).
* <li>for a {@link ObjectAction action}, will always return <tt>null</tt>.
* See instead {@link ObjectAction#getReturnType()} and
* {@link ObjectAction#getParameterTypes()}.
* <li>for a {@link ObjectActionParameter action}, will return the type of
* the parameter}.
* </ul>
*/
ObjectSpecification getSpecification();
}