1 /*
2 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
3 * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file
4 * distributed with this work for additional information
5 * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file
6 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
7 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
8 * with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
9 *
10 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
11 *
12 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
13 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
14 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
15 * KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the
16 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
17 * under the License.
18 *
19 */
20 package org.apache.directory.api.ldap.model.entry;
21
22
23 import java.io.Externalizable;
24
25 import org.apache.directory.api.ldap.model.exception.LdapInvalidAttributeValueException;
26 import org.apache.directory.api.ldap.model.schema.AttributeType;
27 import org.apache.directory.api.ldap.model.schema.SyntaxChecker;
28
29
30 /**
31 * A interface for wrapping attribute values stored into an EntryAttribute. These
32 * values can be a String or a byte[].
33 *
34 * @author <a href="mailto:dev@directory.apache.org">Apache Directory Project</a>
35 */
36 public interface Value<T> extends Cloneable, Externalizable, Comparable<Value<T>>
37 {
38 /** Two flags used to tell if the value is HR or not in serialization */
39 static final boolean STRING = true;
40 static final boolean BINARY = false;
41
42
43 /**
44 * Clone a Value
45 *
46 * @return A cloned value
47 */
48 Value<T> clone();
49
50
51 /**
52 * Check if the contained value is null or not
53 *
54 * @return <code>true</code> if the inner value is null.
55 */
56 boolean isNull();
57
58
59 /**
60 * Get the associated AttributeType
61 *
62 * @return The AttributeType
63 */
64 AttributeType getAttributeType();
65
66
67 /**
68 * Check if the value is stored into an instance of the given
69 * AttributeType, or one of its ascendant.
70 *
71 * For instance, if the Value is associated with a CommonName,
72 * checking for Name will match.
73 *
74 * @param attributeType The AttributeType we are looking at
75 * @return <code>true</code> if the value is associated with the given
76 * attributeType or one of its ascendant
77 */
78 boolean isInstanceOf( AttributeType attributeType );
79
80
81 /**
82 * Get the wrapped value. It will return a copy, not a reference.
83 *
84 * @return a copy of the wrapped value
85 */
86 T getValue();
87
88
89 /**
90 * Get the wrapped value as a byte[]. If the original value
91 * is binary, this method will return a copy of the wrapped byte[]
92 *
93 * @return the wrapped value as a byte[]
94 */
95 byte[] getBytes();
96
97
98 /**
99 * Get the wrapped value as a String. If the original value
100 * is binary, this method will return the value as if it was
101 * an UTF-8 encoded String.
102 *
103 * @return the wrapped value as a String
104 */
105 String getString();
106
107
108 /**
109 * Gets a reference to the wrapped value.
110 *
111 * Warning ! The value is not copied !!!
112 *
113 * @return a direct handle on the value that is wrapped
114 */
115 T getReference();
116
117
118 /**
119 * Tells if the value is schema aware or not.
120 *
121 * @return <code>true</code> if the value is sxhema aware
122 */
123 boolean isSchemaAware();
124
125
126 /**
127 * Uses the syntaxChecker associated with the attributeType to check if the
128 * value is valid.
129 *
130 * @param checker the SyntaxChecker to use to validate the value
131 * @return <code>true</code> if the value is valid
132 * @exception LdapInvalidAttributeValueException if the value cannot be validated
133 */
134 boolean isValid( SyntaxChecker checker ) throws LdapInvalidAttributeValueException;
135
136
137 /**
138 * Gets the normalized (canonical) representation for the wrapped string.
139 * If the wrapped String is null, null is returned, otherwise the normalized
140 * form is returned. If the normalizedValue is null, then this method
141 * will attempt to generate it from the wrapped value.
142 *
143 * @return gets the normalized value
144 */
145 T getNormValue();
146
147
148 /**
149 * Gets a reference to the the normalized (canonical) representation
150 * for the wrapped value.
151 *
152 * @return gets a reference to the normalized value
153 */
154 T getNormReference();
155
156
157 /**
158 * Tells if the current value is Human Readable
159 *
160 * @return <code>true</code> if the value is a String, <code>false</code> otherwise
161 */
162 boolean isHumanReadable();
163
164
165 /**
166 * @return The length of the interned value
167 */
168 int length();
169 }