/*
* Copyright (c) 2006, 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
* DO NOT ALTER OR REMOVE COPYRIGHT NOTICES OR THIS FILE HEADER.
*
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* under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 only, as
* published by the Free Software Foundation. Oracle designates this
* particular file as subject to the "Classpath" exception as provided
* by Oracle in the LICENSE file that accompanied this code.
*
* This code is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
* ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
* FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License
* version 2 for more details (a copy is included in the LICENSE file that
* accompanied this code).
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License version
* 2 along with this work; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
* Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
*
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*/
package javax.xml.bind.annotation;
import javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext;
import java.lang.annotation.ElementType;
import java.lang.annotation.Retention;
import static java.lang.annotation.RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME;
import java.lang.annotation.Target;
/**
* Instructs JAXB to also bind other classes when binding this class.
*
* <p>
* Java makes it impractical/impossible to list all sub-classes of
* a given class. This often gets in a way of JAXB users, as it JAXB
* cannot automatically list up the classes that need to be known
* to {@link JAXBContext}.
*
* <p>
* For example, with the following class definitions:
*
* <pre>
* class Animal {}
* class Dog extends Animal {}
* class Cat extends Animal {}
* </pre>
*
* <p>
* The user would be required to create {@link JAXBContext} as
* {@code JAXBContext.newInstance(Dog.class,Cat.class)}
* ({@code Animal} will be automatically picked up since {@code Dog}
* and {@code Cat} refers to it.)
*
* <p>
* {@link XmlSeeAlso} annotation would allow you to write:
* <pre>
* @XmlSeeAlso({Dog.class,Cat.class})
* class Animal {}
* class Dog extends Animal {}
* class Cat extends Animal {}
* </pre>
*
* <p>
* This would allow you to do {@code JAXBContext.newInstance(Animal.class)}.
* By the help of this annotation, JAXB implementations will be able to
* correctly bind {@code Dog} and {@code Cat}.
*
* @author Kohsuke Kawaguchi
* @since 1.6, JAXB 2.1
*/
@Target({ElementType.TYPE})
@Retention(RUNTIME)
public @interface XmlSeeAlso {
Class[] value();
}