/*
 * 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.commons.beanutils;

import java.beans.IntrospectionException;


Definition of an interface for components that can perform introspection on
bean classes.

 Before PropertyUtils can be used for interaction with a specific Java class, the class's properties have to be determined. This is called introspection and is initiated automatically on demand.
PropertyUtils does not perform introspection on its own, but
delegates this task to one or more objects implementing this interface. This
makes it possible to customize introspection which may be useful for certain
code bases using non-standard conventions for accessing properties.

Version:
$Id$
Since:
1.9/**
 * <p>
 * Definition of an interface for components that can perform introspection on
 * bean classes.
 * </p>
 * <p>
 * Before {@link PropertyUtils} can be used for interaction with a specific Java
 * class, the class's properties have to be determined. This is called
 * <em>introspection</em> and is initiated automatically on demand.
 * <code>PropertyUtils</code> does not perform introspection on its own, but
 * delegates this task to one or more objects implementing this interface. This
 * makes it possible to customize introspection which may be useful for certain
 * code bases using non-standard conventions for accessing properties.
 * </p>
 *
 * @version $Id$
 * @since 1.9
 */
public interface BeanIntrospector {
    
Performs introspection on a Java class. The current class to be inspected
can be queried from the passed in IntrospectionContext
object. A typical implementation has to obtain this class, determine its
properties according to the rules it implements, and add them to the
passed in context object.
Params:
icontext – the context object for interaction with the initiator of
       the introspection request
Throws:
IntrospectionException – if an error occurs during introspection/**
     * Performs introspection on a Java class. The current class to be inspected
     * can be queried from the passed in <code>IntrospectionContext</code>
     * object. A typical implementation has to obtain this class, determine its
     * properties according to the rules it implements, and add them to the
     * passed in context object.
     *
     * @param icontext the context object for interaction with the initiator of
     *        the introspection request
     * @throws IntrospectionException if an error occurs during introspection
     */
    void introspect(IntrospectionContext icontext)
            throws IntrospectionException;
}