plugins/org.eclipse.wst.validation/validate_core/org/eclipse/wst/validation/core/IHelper.java

/*******************************************************************************
 * Copyright (c) 2001, 2004 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.wst.validation.core;


/**
 * This class is used to to separate the IValidator from the model loading. A model is a group of
 * object(s) that must follow some rules.
 * 
 * The model is loaded differently depending on whether the validator is running in WSAD or AAT. If
 * the <code>loadModel</code> method was a method on the IValidator, then there would need to be
 * two versions of validators, one for AAT and one for WSAD. Because <code>loadModel</code> is
 * separate from the IValidator, we provide two different IHelpers instead, and ship the one
 * specific to the environment.
 * 
 * Each IHelper implementation loads a specific model as identified by a String
 * <code>symbolicName</code>. The symbolicName can be any value except null or the empty string.
 * Each validator identifies the symbolic names which it needs, and the type of model which needs to
 * be returned when that symbolic name is loaded via a <code>loadModel</code> method. An IHelper
 * can support more than one IValidator; the helper needs to support every model that each validator
 * needs.
 */
public interface IHelper {
	/**
	 * Load the model identified by <code>symbolicName</code>.<code>symbolicName</code> must
	 * not be null or the empty string if the validator needs to be run in both AAT and WSAD.
	 */
	public Object loadModel(String symbolicName);

	/**
	 * Load the model identified by <code>symbolicName</code> and <code>parms</code>.
	 * <code>symbolicName</code> must not be null or the empty string if the validator needs to be
	 * run in both AAT and WSAD. If <code>parms</code> is null then this method behaves the same
	 * as
	 * 
	 * @link #loadModel(String).
	 * 
	 * This method differs from
	 * @link #loadModel(String) because it takes parameters, from the IValidator, which are
	 *       available only at runtime. If you need to pass a live object to the IHelper, this is
	 *       the loadModel method to use.
	 */
	public Object loadModel(String symbolicName, Object[] parms);
}