/*
* Copyright 2014 Attila Szegedi, Daniel Dekany, Jonathan Revusky
*
* 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 freemarker.template;
/**
* "string" template language data-type; like in Java, an unmodifiable UNICODE character sequence.
* (The name of this interface should be {@code TemplateStringModel}. The misnomer is inherited from the
* old times, when this was the only single-value type in FreeMarker.)
*/
public interface TemplateScalarModel extends TemplateModel {
/**
* A constant value to use as the empty string.
*/
public TemplateModel EMPTY_STRING = new SimpleScalar("");
/**
* Returns the string representation of this model. Don't return {@code null}, as that will cause exception. (In
* classic-compatible mode the engine will convert {@code null} into empty string, though.)
*
* <p>
* Objects of this type should be immutable, that is, calling {@link #getAsString()} should always return the same
* value as for the first time.
*/
public String getAsString() throws TemplateModelException;
}