ConstraintValidatorFactory.java

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* Copyright 2009-2012, Red Hat, Inc. and/or its affiliates, and individual contributors
* by the @authors tag. See the copyright.txt in the distribution for a
* full listing of individual contributors.
*
* 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,
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*/
package javax.validation;

/**
 * Instantiates a {@link ConstraintValidator} instance based off its class.
 * The {@code ConstraintValidatorFactory} is <b>not</b> responsible
 * for calling {@link ConstraintValidator#initialize(java.lang.annotation.Annotation)}.
 *
 * @author Dhanji R. Prasanna
 * @author Emmanuel Bernard
 * @author Hardy Ferentschik
 */
public interface ConstraintValidatorFactory {

	/**
	 * @param key The class of the constraint validator to instantiate
	 *
	 * @return A new constraint validator instance of the specified class
	 */
	<T extends ConstraintValidator<?, ?>> T getInstance(Class<T> key);

	/**
	 * Signals {@code ConstraintValidatorFactory} that the instance is no longer
	 * being used by the Bean Validation provider.
	 *
	 * @param instance validator being released
	 *
	 * @since 1.1
	 */
	void releaseInstance(ConstraintValidator<?, ?> instance);
}