/*
* $HeadURL: http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpcomponents/httpclient/trunk/module-client/src/main/java/org/apache/http/client/RequestDirector.java $
* $Revision: 676020 $
* $Date: 2008-07-11 09:38:49 -0700 (Fri, 11 Jul 2008) $
*
* ====================================================================
* 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.
* ====================================================================
*
* This software consists of voluntary contributions made by many
* individuals on behalf of the Apache Software Foundation. For more
* information on the Apache Software Foundation, please see
* <http://www.apache.org/>.
*
*/
package org.apache.http.client;
import java.io.IOException;
import org.apache.http.HttpHost;
import org.apache.http.HttpRequest;
import org.apache.http.HttpResponse;
import org.apache.http.HttpException;
import org.apache.http.protocol.HttpContext;
/**
* A client-side request director.
* The director decides which steps are necessary to execute a request.
* It establishes connections and optionally processes redirects and
* authentication challenges. The director may therefore generate and
* send a sequence of requests in order to execute one initial request.
*
* <br/><b>Note:</b>
* It is most likely that implementations of this interface will
* allocate connections, and return responses that depend on those
* connections for reading the response entity. Such connections
* MUST be released, but that is out of the scope of a request director.
*
* @author <a href="mailto:rolandw at apache.org">Roland Weber</a>
*
*
* <!-- empty lines to avoid svn diff problems -->
* @version $Revision: 676020 $
*
* @since 4.0
*/
public interface RequestDirector {
/**
* Executes a request.
* <br/><b>Note:</b>
* For the time being, a new director is instantiated for each request.
* This is the same behavior as for <code>HttpMethodDirector</code>
* in HttpClient 3.
*
* @param target the target host for the request.
* Implementations may accept <code>null</code>
* if they can still determine a route, for example
* to a default target or by inspecting the request.
* @param request the request to execute
* @param context the context for executing the request
*
* @return the final response to the request.
* This is never an intermediate response with status code 1xx.
*
* @throws HttpException in case of a problem
* @throws IOException in case of an IO problem
* or if the connection was aborted
*/
HttpResponse execute(HttpHost target, HttpRequest request,
HttpContext context)
throws HttpException, IOException
;
} // class ClientRequestDirector