| /******************************************************************************* |
| * Copyright (c) 2009 - 2010 Cloudsmith Inc. and others. |
| * All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials |
| * are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0 |
| * which accompanies this distribution, and is available at |
| * http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html |
| * |
| * Contributors: |
| * Cloudsmith Inc. - initial API and implementation |
| *******************************************************************************/ |
| package org.eclipse.equinox.p2.metadata.expression; |
| |
| /** |
| * A match expression is a boolean expression matching a candidate of a |
| * specific type. An {@link IEvaluationContext} is needed in order to evaluate |
| * a match and this class provides two ways of doing that. Either a context |
| * is created first and then reused in several subsequent calls to |
| * {@link #isMatch(IEvaluationContext, Object)} or, if no repeated calls are |
| * expected, the {@link #isMatch(Object)} method can be used. It will then |
| * create a context on each call. |
| * @since 2.0 |
| */ |
| public interface IMatchExpression<T> extends IExpression { |
| /** |
| * <p>Creates a new context to be passed to repeated subsequent evaluations. The context |
| * will introduce 'this' as an uninitialized variable and make the parameters available. |
| * @return A new evaluation context. |
| */ |
| IEvaluationContext createContext(); |
| |
| /** |
| * Returns the parameters that this match expression was created with. |
| * @return An array of parameters, possibly empty but never <code>null</code>. |
| */ |
| Object[] getParameters(); |
| |
| /** |
| * This method creates a new evaluation context and assigns the <code>candidate</code> |
| * to the 'this' variable of the <code>context</code> and then evaluates the expression. |
| * This is essentially a short form for <pre>isMatch(createContext(), candidate)</pre>. |
| * @param candidate The object to test. |
| * @return the result of the evaluation. |
| */ |
| boolean isMatch(T candidate); |
| |
| /** |
| * This method assigns <code>candidate</code> to the 'this' variable of the |
| * <code>context</code> and then evaluates the expression. |
| * @param context A context |
| * @param candidate The object to test. |
| * @return the result of the evaluation. |
| */ |
| boolean isMatch(IEvaluationContext context, T candidate); |
| } |