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Interface CollectionConstraint

All Known Implementing Classes:

CollectionConstraint.AllValuesIn, CollectionConstraint.And, CollectionConstraint.Contains, CollectionConstraint.Or

public interface CollectionConstraint

Used by AnnotationType to represent the constraint on the collection of values in a property-slot. CollectionConstraints usually use a PropertyConstraint to validate the individual elements. Use one or more of the built-in implementations to build new AnnotationTypes.

Since:

1.3

Author:

Thomas Down, Matthew Pocock

Nested Class Summary

static class	CollectionConstraint.AllValuesIn CollectionConstraint which validates all members of a Collection.
static class	CollectionConstraint.And A collection constraint that accpepts collections iff they are accepted by both child constraints.
static class	CollectionConstraint.Contains CollectionConstraint which validates a portion of a Collection.
static class	CollectionConstraint.Or A collection constraint that accepts items iff they are accepted by either child constraints.

Field Summary

static CollectionConstraint	ANY ANY is a constraint which accepts a property for addition under all conditions.
static CollectionConstraint	EMPTY EMPTY is a constraint which only accepts the empty set.
static CollectionConstraint	NONE NONE is a constraint which accepts no value for a property under any condition.

Method Summary

boolean	accept(Object values) accept returns true if the value fulfills the constraint.
boolean	subConstraintOf(CollectionConstraint subConstraint) subConstraintOf returns true if the constraint is a sub-constraint.
boolean	validateAddValue(Collection current, Object newValue) Return true iff the Collection formed by adding newValue to current would be accepted by this constraint.
boolean	validateRemoveValue(Collection current, Object victim) Return true iff the Collection formed by removing newValue from current would be accepted by this constraint.

Field Detail

ANY

static final CollectionConstraint ANY

ANY is a constraint which accepts a property for addition under all conditions. Whenever a CollectionConstraint is needed and you want to allow any value there

EMPTY

static final CollectionConstraint EMPTY

EMPTY is a constraint which only accepts the empty set. Use this to indicate that a property must be undefined

NONE

static final CollectionConstraint NONE

NONE is a constraint which accepts no value for a property under any condition. This value indicates an impossible condition. It may be returned by methods such as AnnotationTools.intersection to indicate that NO values of a property (include undefined) are valid.

Method Detail

accept

boolean accept(Object values)

accept returns true if the value fulfills the constraint.

Parameters:

values - a Collection to check.

Returns:

true if the values are acceptable powerUser Manually compare items with the CollectionConstraint. Node: this will ususaly be done for you in an AnnotationType instance

subConstraintOf

boolean subConstraintOf(CollectionConstraint subConstraint)

subConstraintOf returns true if the constraint is a sub-constraint.

A pair of constraints super and sub are in a superConstraint/subConstraint relationship if every object accepted by sub is also accepted by super. To put it another way, if instanceOf was used as a set-membership indicator function over some set of objects, then the set produced by super would be a superset of that produced by sub.

It is not expected that constraints will neccesarily maintain references to super/sub types. It will be more usual to infer this relationship by introspecting the constraints themselves. For example, CollectionConstraint.ByClass will infer subConstraintOf by looking at the possible class of all items matching subConstraint.

Parameters:

subConstraint - a CollectionConstraint to check.

Returns:

a boolean. Usefull when attempting to compare two constraints to see if it is necisary to retain both. You may want to check the more general or the more specific constraint only.

validateAddValue

boolean validateAddValue(Collection current,
                         Object newValue)

Return true iff the Collection formed by adding newValue to current would be accepted by this constraint. Implementations may not assume that current is valid.

Parameters:

current - a Collection containing the current values

newValue - the new value to add

Returns:

true if adding the new value will result in an acceptable property

validateRemoveValue

boolean validateRemoveValue(Collection current,
                            Object victim)

Return true iff the Collection formed by removing newValue from current would be accepted by this constraint. Implementations may not assume that current is valid. However, current will already have been checked to ensure that it contains victim.

Parameters:

current - a Collection containing the current values

victim - the value to remove

Returns:

true if removing the victim will result in an acceptable property value set