/*

  * Copyright 2011 The Kuali Foundation

  *

  * Licensed under the Educational Community License, Version 1.0 (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/ecl1.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.datadictionary.validation.constraint.provider;

 import java.util.List;

 import org.kuali.rice.kns.datadictionary.validation.capability.Constrainable;

 import org.kuali.rice.kns.datadictionary.validation.constraint.Constraint;

 /**

  * An object that determines a list of constraints for a given Constrainable definition for an attribute 

  * in the data dictionary. The ConstraintProvider interface must be implemented by any class that contributes

  * Constraints to the DictionaryValidationService. Multiple ConstraintProviders can be registered simultaneously,

  * and each can contribute constraints for any number of constraint types. 

  * 

  * These constraints can be looked up in a variety of ways. They may be:

  * 

  * (1) member variables of the Constrainable definition itself {@see CaseConstrainable.class}

  * (2) the Constrainable definition itself may extend Constraint {@see LengthConstrainable.class}

  * (3) provided from some external source, or generated on the fly

  * 

  * The goal here is to provide a mechanism that enables implementing institutions to inject new Constraints and ConstraintProcessor

  * classes into the DictionaryValidationService implementation via dependency injection. 

  * 

  * @author Kuali Rice Team (rice.collab@kuali.org)

  * @since 1.1

  */

 public interface ConstraintProvider<T extends Constrainable> {

         public List<Constraint> getConstraints(T definition, Class<? extends Constraint> constraintType);

         public boolean isSupported(Constrainable definition);

 }