001 /****************************************************************
002 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one *
003 * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file *
004 * distributed with this work for additional information *
005 * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file *
006 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the *
007 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance *
008 * with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at *
009 * *
010 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 *
011 * *
012 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, *
013 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an *
014 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY *
015 * KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the *
016 * specific language governing permissions and limitations *
017 * under the License. *
018 ****************************************************************/
019
020 package org.apache.james.jspf.parser;
021
022 import java.util.regex.Pattern;
023
024 /**
025 * A term definition contains everything needed to match and create
026 * new Terms implementations.
027 */
028 public interface TermDefinition {
029
030 /**
031 * Retrieve the pattern to be used to match a string against this record type.
032 *
033 * @return the pattern for this term
034 */
035 public Pattern getPattern();
036
037 /**
038 * The class implementing this Term type.
039 *
040 * @return the class object.
041 */
042 public Class<?> getTermDef();
043
044 /**
045 * Return the number of groups to be expected from the pattern of this
046 * Term.
047 *
048 * @return the number of groups
049 */
050 public int getMatchSize();
051
052 }