/*******************************************************************************
 * Copyright (c) 2009 Jesper Moller, 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:
 *     Jesper Moller - initial API and implementation
 *******************************************************************************/

package org.eclipse.wst.xml.xpath2.api;

import java.util.Comparator;

/**
 * Service provider interface for looking up collations from within the
 * dynamic context.
 * 
 * Definition from the XPath2 specification: A collation is a specification of
 * the manner in which strings and URIs are compared and, by extension,
 * ordered. For a more complete definition of collation, see [XQuery 1.0 and
 * XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators (Second Edition)].
 * @since 2.0
 */
public interface CollationProvider {
	/**
	 * The default collation which is guaranteed to always be implemented
	 */
	public static final String CODEPOINT_COLLATION = "http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions/collation/codepoint";

	/**
	 * Gets the named collator. W3C does not define collation names (yet?) so
	 * we are constrained to using an implementation-defined naming scheme.
	 * 
	 * @param name
	 *            A URI designating the collation to use
	 * @return The collation to use, or null if no such collation exists by
	 *         this provider
	 */
	Comparator<String> getCollation(String name);
	
	String getDefaultCollation();
}