NameToClassResolver.java

package org.rosenvold.spring.convention;

/*
 * Copyright 2011 the original author or authors.
 *
 * Licensed 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.
 */

/**
 * Allows a textual bean name to be mapped to an implementing class
 *
 * @author Kristian Rosenvold
 */
public interface NameToClassResolver {
    /**
     * Resolve a name to a class
     *
     * @param name The bean name. This will usually be a full class name.
     *             If this points to a class, it should be used as a bean directly.
     *             If it points to an interface, the implementation should
     *             decide how to map this to an implementation class.
     * @param candidateEvaluator
     * @return A class or null if no resolution can be established. Convention will
     *         pass unresolvable names onto the parent context.
     */
    Class resolveBean(String name, final CandidateEvaluator candidateEvaluator);
}