/*
 *  RapidMiner
 *
 *  Copyright (C) 2001-2011 by Rapid-I and the contributors
 *
 *  Complete list of developers available at our web site:
 *
 *       http://rapid-i.com
 *
 *  This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
 *  it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by
 *  the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
 *  (at your option) any later version.
 *
 *  This program 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 Affero General Public License for more details.
 *
 *  You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
 *  along with this program.  If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
 */
package com.rapidminer.operator.preprocessing.normalization;

import java.util.Collection;
import java.util.List;

import com.rapidminer.example.ExampleSet;
import com.rapidminer.operator.Operator;
import com.rapidminer.operator.UserError;
import com.rapidminer.operator.ports.InputPort;
import com.rapidminer.operator.ports.metadata.AttributeMetaData;
import com.rapidminer.operator.ports.metadata.ExampleSetMetaData;
import com.rapidminer.parameter.ParameterHandler;
import com.rapidminer.parameter.ParameterType;
import com.rapidminer.parameter.UndefinedParameterError;

/**
 * This is an interface for all Normalization methods. Each normalization method
 * needs to have an empty constructor.
 * 
 * @author Sebastian Land
 */
public interface NormalizationMethod {

	/**
	 * This modifies the meta data of the given attribute and returns a collection of all derived attributes. 
	 * In normal cases this is simply one single attribute.
	 * @param parameterHandler TODO
	 */
	public Collection<AttributeMetaData> modifyAttributeMetaData(ExampleSetMetaData emd, AttributeMetaData amd, InputPort exampleSetInputPort, ParameterHandler parameterHandler) throws UndefinedParameterError;
	
	/**
	 * This method can be used to clear all member types right before the normalization model is retrieved.
	 */
	public void init();
	/**
	 * This method will be called to build the normalization model from the given {@link ExampleSet}.
	 * It will be called directly after init() is called.
	 * @param operator TODO
	 * @throws UserError 
	 */
	public AbstractNormalizationModel getNormalizationModel(ExampleSet exampleSet, Operator operator) throws UserError;
	
	/**
	 * If this method needs additional parameter types, they can be returned here.
	 */
	public List<ParameterType> getParameterTypes(ParameterHandler handler);
	
	/**
	 * This just returns the name of the method.
	 */
	public String getName();
}