IdBuilder.java

/**
 * Licensed to The Apereo Foundation under one or more contributor license
 * agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional
 * information regarding copyright ownership.
 *
 *
 * The Apereo Foundation licenses this file to you under the Educational
 * Community 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://opensource.org/licenses/ecl2.txt
 *
 * 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 org.opencastproject.mediapackage.identifier;

/**
 * Interface that describes the methods of an id builder.
 */
public interface IdBuilder {

  /**
   * Creates a new identifier. The identifier is supposed to be unique within a running system.
   * <p>
   * The default implementation will return a uuid-style identifier.
   * </p>
   *
   * @return the new identifier
   */
  Id createNew();

  /**
   * This method can be used to determine if <code>id</code> is in fact a vaild identifier as expected by this id
   * builder. If this is not the case, an {@link IllegalArgumentException} is thrown.
   *
   * @return the id
   * @throws IllegalArgumentException
   *           if the identifier is malformed
   */
  Id fromString(String id) throws IllegalArgumentException;

}