/*******************************************************************************
 * Copyright (c) 2005 Oracle Corporation.
 * 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:
 *    Ian Trimble - initial API and implementation
 *******************************************************************************/ 
package org.eclipse.jst.pagedesigner.dtmanager.converter;

import org.w3c.dom.Element;

/**
 * Transforms an original input Element instance to an output Element instance
 * by invoking a collection of ITransformOperation instances.  
 * 
 * <p><b>Provisional API - subject to change</b></p>
 * 
 * @author Ian Trimble - Oracle
 */
public interface ITransformer {

	/**
	 * Appends an ITransformOperation instance to the collection.
	 * 
	 * @param operation ITransformOperation instance to be appended.
     * API: does this need to be on the interface or could it be pushed
     * into the instance constructor (i.e. factory).
	 */
	public void appendTransformOperation(ITransformOperation operation);

	/**
	 * Transforms an original input Element instance to an output Element
	 * instance, typically by invoking each ITransformOperation instance in
	 * this instance's collection.
	 * 
	 * @param srcElement Original input Element instance.
	 * @return Transformed output Element instance.
	 * 
     * TODO: I'd like to consider templating the generic ITransformer
     * interface to ITransformer<I,O> and making this a normative instance
     * case of ITransformer<Element, Element>
	 */
	public Element transform(Element srcElement);

}