/*

  * 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.processor;

 import org.kuali.rice.kns.datadictionary.exception.AttributeValidationException;

 import org.kuali.rice.kns.datadictionary.validation.AttributeValueReader;

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

 import org.kuali.rice.kns.datadictionary.validation.result.DictionaryValidationResult;

 import org.kuali.rice.kns.datadictionary.validation.result.ProcessorResult;

 /**

  * This interface must be implemented by constraint processors, which validate individual constraints in the

  * data dictionary. The idea is that each constraint has its own processor, and that the validation service can be configured

  * via dependency injection with a list of processors. This gives institutions the ability to easily modify how validation

  * should be handled and to add arbitrary new constraints and constraint processors. An alternative might have been to put

  * the process() method into the Constraint marker interface and have each Constraint define its own processing, but that would

  * have forced business logic into what are naturally API classes (classes that implement Constraint). This strategy separates

  * the two functions. 

  * 

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

  */

 public interface ConstraintProcessor<T, C extends Constraint> {

         public ProcessorResult process(DictionaryValidationResult result, T value, C constraint, AttributeValueReader attributeValueReader) throws AttributeValidationException;

         public String getName();

         public Class<? extends Constraint> getConstraintType();

         /**

          * This method return true if the processing of this constraint is something that can be opted out of by some pieces of code.

          * The only example of this in the version under development (1.1) is the existence constraint. 

          * 

          * @return true if this processor can be turned off by some pieces of code, false otherwise

          */

         public boolean isOptional();

 }