001    /**
002     * Copyright 2005-2012 The Kuali Foundation
003     *
004     * Licensed under the Educational Community License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
005     * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
006     * You may obtain a copy of the License at
007     *
008     * http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ecl2.php
009     *
010     * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
011     * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
012     * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
013     * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
014     * limitations under the License.
015     */
016    package org.kuali.rice.krad.util.documentserializer;
017    
018    /**
019     * This class represents metadata about the serializibility of a property during the document serialization proces..
020     */
021    public interface PropertySerializabilityMetadata {
022        /**
023         * See docs for the elements of this enum
024         */
025        public enum PropertySerializability {
026            /**
027             * Indicates that the property represented by this metadata object should be serialized (i.e. have an open
028             * and close XML tag rendered) as well as all of the property's primitives.  It does not mean that all child
029             * non-primitive properties should be serialized.  Child non-primitives are only serialized if a call to
030             * {@link PropertySerializabilityMetadata#getSerializableSubProperty(String)} returns a non-null result when
031             * the child property name is passed in.
032             */
033            SERIALIZE_OBJECT_AND_ALL_PRIMITIVES,
034            
035            /**
036             * Indicates that the property represented by this metadata object should be serialized (i.e. have an open
037             * and close XML tag rendered).  Child properties (primitive or otherwise) are only serialized if a call to 
038             * {@link PropertySerializabilityMetadata#getSerializableSubProperty(String)} returns a non-null result when
039             * the child property name is passed in.
040             */
041            SERIALIZE_OBJECT
042        }
043    
044        /**
045         * Returns the serializability of this property.  See {@link PropertySerializability}.
046         * 
047         * @return
048         */
049        public PropertySerializability getPropertySerializability();
050    
051        /**
052         * Returns the full path string of the property corresponding to this metadata.
053         * 
054         * @return
055         */
056        public String getPathString();
057        
058        /**
059         * Returns metadata bout a child property, if it exists
060         * 
061         * @param childPropertyName the name of a child property, relative to this property (i.e. no .'s in the name)
062         * @return null if there is no child property with the specified name, otherwise, metadata about the child
063         */
064        public PropertySerializabilityMetadata getSerializableChildProperty(String childPropertyName);
065    }