/*
* Copyright 2014 Daniel Bechler
*
* 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.
*/
package de.danielbechler.diff.instantiation;
/**
* Serves as factory for objects. It is mainly used when {@link de.danielbechler.diff.node.DiffNode#canonicalSet(Object,
* Object)} is called on a node for which the target returns <code>null</code> for its parent. The parent (and
* subsequently all of its predecessors along the path) will be created via this factory and inserted into the target
* object.
*/
public interface InstanceFactory
{
/**
* @param type The type for which a new instance should be created
* @return A new instance of the given <code>type</code> or <code>null</code> if it doesn't know how to instantiate
* the type. In case of the latter, the {@link de.danielbechler.diff.ObjectDiffer} will automatically fallback to
* instantiation via public non-arg constructor. If that also fails, an {@link TypeInstantiationException}
* will be thrown.
* <p/>
* <b>Note from the author:</b> it wasn't an easy decision, but in the end I favored an exception over
* logging a warning, because this way it is much harder to accidentally end up with incomplete merges without
* noticing. If this turns out to be a problem for you, please let me know in the issue tracker. We could probably
* add a flag to switch to the logging-only mode. But as long as nobody complains, I'll just leave it as it is right
* now.
*/
Object newInstanceOfType(Class<?> type);
}