001/*
002 * Style.java July 2008
003 *
004 * Copyright (C) 2008, Niall Gallagher <niallg@users.sf.net>
005 *
006 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
007 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
008 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
009 *
010 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
011 *
012 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
013 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
014 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or 
015 * implied. See the License for the specific language governing 
016 * permissions and limitations under the License.
017 */
018
019package org.simpleframework.xml.stream;
020
021/**
022 * The <code>Style</code> interface is used to represent an XML style
023 * that can be applied to a serialized object. A style can be used to
024 * modify the element and attribute names for the generated document.
025 * Styles can be used to generate hyphenated or camel case XML.
026 * <pre>
027 * 
028 *    &lt;example-element&gt;
029 *        &lt;child-element example-attribute='example'&gt;
030 *           &lt;inner-element&gt;example&lt;/inner-element&gt;
031 *        &lt;/child-element&gt;
032 *     &lt;/example-element&gt;
033 *     
034 * </pre>
035 * Above the hyphenated XML elements and attributes can be generated
036 * from a style implementation. Styles enable the same objects to be
037 * serialized in different ways, generating different styles of XML
038 * without having to modify the class schema for that object.    
039 * 
040 * @author Niall Gallagher
041 */
042public interface Style {
043  
044   /**
045    * This is used to generate the XML element representation of 
046    * the specified name. Element names should ensure to keep the
047    * uniqueness of the name such that two different names will
048    * be styled in to two different strings.
049    * 
050    * @param name this is the element name that is to be styled
051    * 
052    * @return this returns the styled name of the XML element
053    */
054   String getElement(String name);
055   
056   /**
057    * This is used to generate the XML attribute representation of 
058    * the specified name. Attribute names should ensure to keep the
059    * uniqueness of the name such that two different names will
060    * be styled in to two different strings.
061    * 
062    * @param name this is the attribute name that is to be styled
063    * 
064    * @return this returns the styled name of the XML attribute
065    */
066   String getAttribute(String name);
067}