/*******************************************************************************
 * Copyright (c) 2008 IBM Corporation 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:
 *     IBM Corporation - initial API and implementation
 ******************************************************************************/
package org.eclipse.jface.databinding.viewers;

/**
 * Instances of this class can be used to improve accuracy and performance of an
 * {@link ObservableListTreeContentProvider} or an
 * {@link ObservableSetTreeContentProvider}. This class is intended to be
 * subclassed by clients.
 * 
 * @since 1.2
 * 
 */
public abstract class TreeStructureAdvisor {

	/**
	 * Returns the parent for the given element, or <code>null</code>
	 * indicating that the parent can't be computed. In this case the
	 * tree-structured viewer can't expand a given node correctly if requested.
	 * The default implementation returns null; clients should override.
	 * 
	 * @param element
	 *            the element
	 * @return the parent element, or <code>null</code> if it has none or if
	 *         the parent cannot be computed
	 */
	public Object getParent(Object element) {
		return null;
	}

	/**
	 * Returns whether the given element has children, or <code>null</code> if
	 * the actual children collection should be consulted. The default
	 * implementation returns null; clients should override.
	 * <p>
	 * Intended as an optimization for when the viewer does not need the actual
	 * children. Clients may be able to implement this more efficiently than
	 * <code>getChildren</code>.
	 * </p>
	 * 
	 * @param element
	 *            the element
	 * @return <code>Boolean.TRUE</code> if the given element has children,
	 *         <code>Boolean.FALSE</code> if it has no children, or
	 *         <code>null</code> if the children collection should be
	 *         consulted.
	 */
	public Boolean hasChildren(Object element) {
		return null;
	}

}