UniversalDao.java

/*******************************************************************************
 *   Gisgraphy Project 
 * 
 *   This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
 *   modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
 *   License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
 *   version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
 * 
 *   This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 *   but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 *   MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
 *   Lesser General Public License for more details.
 * 
 *   You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
 *   License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software
 *   Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA
 * 
 *  Copyright 2008  Gisgraphy project 
 *  David Masclet <davidmasclet@gisgraphy.com>
 *  
 *  
 *******************************************************************************/
package com.gisgraphy.dao;

import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.List;

/**
 * Data Access Object (DAO) interface.
 * 
 * @author <a href="mailto:matt@raibledesigns.com">Matt Raible</a>
 *         Modifications and comments by <a href="mailto:bwnoll@gmail.com">Bryan
 *         Noll</a> This thing used to be named simply 'GenericDao' in versions
 *         of appfuse prior to 2.0. It was renamed in an attempt to distinguish
 *         and describe it as something different than GenericDao. GenericDao is
 *         intended for subclassing, and was named Generic because 1) it has
 *         very general functionality and 2) is 'generic' in the Java 5 sense of
 *         the word... aka... it uses Generics. Implementations of this class
 *         are not intended for subclassing. You most likely would want to
 *         subclass GenericDao. The only real difference is that instances of
 *         java.lang.Class are passed into the methods in this class, and they
 *         are part of the constructor in the GenericDao, hence you'll have to
 *         do some casting if you use this one.
 * @see com.gisgraphy.dao.GenericDao
 */
public interface UniversalDao {

    /**
     * Generic method used to get all objects of a particular type. This is the
     * same as lookup up all rows in a table.
     * 
     * @param clazz
     *                the type of objects (a.k.a. while table) to get data from
     * @return List of populated objects
     */
    List<?> getAll(Class<?> clazz);

    /**
     * Generic method to get an object based on class and identifier. An
     * ObjectRetrievalFailureException Runtime Exception is thrown if nothing is
     * found.
     * 
     * @param clazz
     *                model class to lookup
     * @param id
     *                the identifier (primary key) of the class
     * @return a populated object
     * @see org.springframework.orm.ObjectRetrievalFailureException
     */
    Object get(Class<?> clazz, Serializable id);

    /**
     * Generic method to save an object - handles both update and insert.
     * 
     * @param o
     *                the object to save
     * @return a populated object
     */
    Object save(Object o);

    /**
     * Generic method to delete an object based on class and id
     * 
     * @param clazz
     *                model class to lookup
     * @param id
     *                the identifier (primary key) of the class
     */
    void remove(Class<?> clazz, Serializable id);
}