/*
 *  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 com.google.code.hs4j.network.buffer;

import java.nio.ByteBuffer;


/**
 * Allocates {@link IoBuffer}s and manages them. Please implement this interface
 * if you need more advanced memory management scheme.
 * 
 * @author The Apache MINA Project (dev@mina.apache.org)
 * @version $Rev: 671827 $, $Date: 2008-06-26 10:49:48 +0200 (Thu, 26 Jun 2008)
 *          $
 */
public interface IoBufferAllocator {
    /**
     * Returns the buffer which is capable of the specified size.
     * 
     * @param capacity
     *            the capacity of the buffer
     * @param direct
     *            <tt>true</tt> to get a direct buffer, <tt>false</tt> to get a
     *            heap buffer.
     */
    IoBuffer allocate(int capacity, boolean direct);


    /**
     * Returns the NIO buffer which is capable of the specified size.
     * 
     * @param capacity
     *            the capacity of the buffer
     * @param direct
     *            <tt>true</tt> to get a direct buffer, <tt>false</tt> to get a
     *            heap buffer.
     */
    ByteBuffer allocateNioBuffer(int capacity, boolean direct);


    /**
     * Wraps the specified NIO {@link ByteBuffer} into MINA buffer.
     */
    IoBuffer wrap(ByteBuffer nioBuffer);


    /**
     * Dispose of this allocator.
     */
    void dispose();
}