001 /* 002 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more 003 * contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with 004 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. 005 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0 006 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with 007 * the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at 008 * 009 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 010 * 011 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software 012 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, 013 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. 014 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and 015 * limitations under the License. 016 */ 017 package org.apache.commons.betwixt.io; 018 019 020 /** <p>Interface allowing pluggable <code>ID</code> attribute value generators.</p> 021 * 022 * <p> <code>IDGenerator</code>'s are used to generate <code>ID</code> 023 * attribute values by <code>BeanWriter</code>. 024 * A user can specify the generation mechanism by passing an implementation to 025 * {@link BeanWriter#setIdGenerator}.</p> 026 * 027 * <p>Standard implementations are included with that supply random and sequantial values.</p> 028 * 029 * @author <a href="mailto:rdonkin@apache.org">Robert Burrell Donkin</a> 030 * @version $Revision: 438373 $ 031 */ 032 public interface IDGenerator { 033 034 /** 035 * Get the last <code>ID</code> value generated. 036 * 037 * @return the last value generated 038 */ 039 public String getLastId(); 040 041 /** 042 * Generate a new <code>ID</code> attribute value. 043 * 044 * @return next value 045 */ 046 public String nextId(); 047 }