package org.apache.lucene.queryParser.ext;

/**
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 * The ASF licenses this file to You 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,
 * 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.
 */

import org.apache.lucene.queryParser.ParseException;
import org.apache.lucene.queryParser.QueryParser;
import org.apache.lucene.search.Query;

/**
 * This class represents an extension base class to the Lucene standard
 * {@link QueryParser}. The {@link QueryParser} is generated by the JavaCC
 * parser generator. Changing or adding functionality or syntax in the standard
 * query parser requires changes to the JavaCC source file. To enable extending
 * the standard query parser without changing the JavaCC sources and re-generate
 * the parser the {@link ParserExtension} can be customized and plugged into an
 * instance of {@link ExtendableQueryParser}, a direct subclass of
 * {@link QueryParser}.
 * 
 * @see Extensions
 * @see ExtendableQueryParser
 */
public abstract class ParserExtension {

  /**
   * Processes the given {@link ExtensionQuery} and returns a corresponding
   * {@link Query} instance. Subclasses must either return a {@link Query}
   * instance or raise a {@link ParseException}. This method must not return
   * <code>null</code>.
   * 
   * @param query
   *          the extension query
   * @return a new query instance
   * @throws ParseException
   *           if the query can not be parsed.
   */
  public abstract Query parse(final ExtensionQuery query) throws ParseException;

}