INestedContentProvider.java

/*******************************************************************************
 * Copyright (c) 2000, 2008 IBM Corporation and others. 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
 * 
 * Contributors: IBM Corporation - initial API and implementation Chisel Group,
 * University of Victoria
 ******************************************************************************/
package org.eclipse.zest.core.viewers;

/*
 * A content provider for nested graphs. Any entity based content provider
 * (IGraphEntityContentProvider or IGraphEntityRelationshipContentProvider) can
 * also implement this interface. Any node that "hasChildren" will be rendered
 * as a container.
 * 
 * Note: Containers cannot contain other containers.
 * 
 * @author irbull
 */
public interface INestedContentProvider {

	/**
	 * Does the current node have children?  If so, it will be rendered as a
	 * container.
	 * 
	 * @param element The current node
	 * @return True if it has children, false otherwise
	 */
	public boolean hasChildren(Object element);

	/**
	 * Gets the children of this node.  This method will not be called
	 * if hasChildren returns false.
	 * 
	 * @param element The current node
	 * @return The list of children for this node.  
	 */
	public Object[] getChildren(Object element);
}