Text.java

/*
 * 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.
 */
package org.apache.stanbol.entityhub.servicesapi.model;

/**
 * Defines a natural language text in a given language.<p>
 * The text MUST NOT be <code>null</code> nor an empty {@link String}. The
 * language may be <code>null</code> (indicating the default language) or any
 * kind of value. It is recommended to use ISO 639-1 codes (two Letter codes).
 * By definition it is also allowed to use empty strings as language. However
 * implementations of this interface are free to convert the empty language to
 * <code>null</code>.<p>
 * Implementations of that interface MUST BE immutable
 * 
 * @author Rupert Westenthaler
 */
public interface Text {
    /**
     * Getter for the text (not <code>null</code> nor empty)
     * @return the text
     */
    String getText();
    /**
     * Getter for the language. <code>null</code> or an empty string indicate, 
     * that the text is not specific to a language (e.g. the name of a person).
     * Note that implementation can change empty values to <code>null</code> but.
     * @return the language
     */
    String getLanguage();
    /**
     * The text without language information - this is the same as returned
     * by {@link #getText()}.
     * @return the text
     */
    String toString();
}