DataTypeAware.java

/**
 * 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.camel.spi;

/**
 * Allows {@link org.apache.camel.Message} to store a {@link DataType} which
 * represents the data type of the Message. Sometimes message content is marshaled
 * into {@code String}, {@code InputStream} or etc, and the data type structure is
 * not available until it's unmarshaled into Java object. The {@link DataType} stored
 * in a DataTypeAware message carries that missing data type information even if it's
 * marshaled, and whatever the Java class of the body is. This type information is used
 * to detect required {@link Transformer} and {@link Validator}.
 * 
 * @see {@link DataType} {@link Transformer} {@link Validator}
 */
public interface DataTypeAware {

    /**
     * Set the data type of the message.
     * @param type data type
     */
    void setDataType(DataType type);

    /**
     * Get the data type of the message.
     * @return data type
     */
    DataType getDataType();

    /**
     * Set the message body with data type.
     * @param body message body
     * @param type data type
     */
    void setBody(Object body, DataType type);

}