Aggregated.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.deltaspike.core.api.config.view.metadata;

import java.lang.annotation.Documented;
import java.lang.annotation.Retention;
import java.lang.annotation.Target;

import static java.lang.annotation.ElementType.ANNOTATION_TYPE;
import static java.lang.annotation.RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME;

/**
 * Marks view-metadata annotations or their fields as aggregated metadata. That results in retention of multiple
 * instances of such annotation per view instead of the metadata getting overriden by lower levels.
 *
 * Core just provides this annotation, but the concrete behaviour is defined by a concrete ConfigNodeConverter. E.g.
 * DefaultConfigNodeConverter uses the result stored in
 * {@link org.apache.deltaspike.core.spi.config.view.ViewConfigNode#getInheritedMetaData} to replace default- (/ null-)
 * values of "higher" levels with custom values of "lower" levels, if #value is 'true'.
 */
//TODO re-visit and discuss method-level (for annotation-attributes)
@Target({ ANNOTATION_TYPE })
@Retention(RUNTIME)
@Documented
public @interface Aggregated
{
    /**
     * @return false to override the same metadata type of the parent view-config, and true to allow multiple instances
     *         of a metadata per view
     */
    boolean value();
}