/*

  * Copyright 2007-2008 The Kuali Foundation

  *

  * Licensed 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://www.opensource.org/licenses/ecl2.php

  *

  * 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.kuali.rice.kns.util.documentserializer;

 /**

  * This class represents metadata about the serializibility of a property during the document serialization proces..

  */

 public interface PropertySerializabilityMetadata {

     /**

      * See docs for the elements of this enum

      */

     public enum PropertySerializability {

         /**

          * Indicates that the property represented by this metadata object should be serialized (i.e. have an open

          * and close XML tag rendered) as well as all of the property's primitives.  It does not mean that all child

          * non-primitive properties should be serialized.  Child non-primitives are only serialized if a call to

          * {@link PropertySerializabilityMetadata#getSerializableSubProperty(String)} returns a non-null result when

          * the child property name is passed in.

          */

         SERIALIZE_OBJECT_AND_ALL_PRIMITIVES,

         /**

          * Indicates that the property represented by this metadata object should be serialized (i.e. have an open

          * and close XML tag rendered).  Child properties (primitive or otherwise) are only serialized if a call to 

          * {@link PropertySerializabilityMetadata#getSerializableSubProperty(String)} returns a non-null result when

          * the child property name is passed in.

          */

         SERIALIZE_OBJECT

     }

     /**

      * Returns the serializability of this property.  See {@link PropertySerializability}.

      * 

      * @return

      */

     public PropertySerializability getPropertySerializability();

     /**

      * Returns the full path string of the property corresponding to this metadata.

      * 

      * @return

      */

     public String getPathString();

     /**

      * Returns metadata bout a child property, if it exists

      * 

      * @param childPropertyName the name of a child property, relative to this property (i.e. no .'s in the name)

      * @return null if there is no child property with the specified name, otherwise, metadata about the child

      */

     public PropertySerializabilityMetadata getSerializableChildProperty(String childPropertyName);

 }