UniversalManager.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.service;

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

/**
 * Business Facade 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 'GenericManager' in
 *         versions of AppFuse prior to 2.0. It was renamed in an attempt to
 *         distinguish and describe it as something different than
 *         GenericManager. GenericManager 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 GenericManager. 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
 *         GenericManager, hence you'll have to do some casting if you use this
 *         one.
 */
public interface UniversalManager {
    /**
     * Generic method used to get a all objects of a particular type.
     * 
     * @param clazz
     *                the type of objects
     * @return List of populated objects
     */
    List<?> getAll(Class<?> clazz);

    /**
     * Generic method to get an object based on class and identifier.
     * 
     * @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.
     * 
     * @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 of the class
     */
    void remove(Class<?> clazz, Serializable id);
}