// $Id: RefTreeNode.java,v 1.1 2010-02-23 20:31:10 tkamiya Exp $
package fc.fp.util.xmlr;

import java.util.Iterator;

/**
 * Base interface for a node in a reftree. Nodes in reftrees are of three kinds:
 * <ul>
 * <li>Ordinary nodes that have an arbitary {@linkplain  #getContent content}</li>
 * <li>Nodes referencing a single node from another tree. For these nodes,
 * {@link #isNodeRef} is <code>true</code></li>
 * <li>Nodes referencing a subtree from another tree. For these nodes,
 * {@link #isTreeRef} is <code>true</code></li>
 * </ul>
 * <p>The interface provides the operations on reftree nodes that are required
 * by the algorithms in this package. The tree addressing methods were
 * deliberately kept as simple as possible in order to put minimum restrictions
 * on the actual implementations.
 */
public interface RefTreeNode {

  /** Return node id/reference target. This fields serves double duty as
   * unique id of the node as well as target id, in the case when the node
   * is a reference.
   * @return node unique id.
   */

  public String getId();

  /** Get parent of node.
   * @return parent of this node, or <code>null</code> if this is the root.
   */
  public RefTreeNode getParent();

  /** Get content of node. The content may be any object the XMLR API user
   * wishes to attach to the node. The content of reference nodes is ignored.
   * @return Object content of the node
   */
  public Object getContent();

  /** Get children of the node.
   * @return iterator over the children of the node
   */

  public Iterator getChildIterator();

  /** Returns true if this node is a reference node.
   * @return <code>true</code> if this node is a reference node.
   */
  public boolean isReference();

  /** Returns true if this node references a subtree. Subtree references
   * must not have any children.
   * @return <code>true</code> if this node references a subtree.
   */

  public boolean isTreeRef();

  /** Returns true if this node references a single element.
   * @return <code>true</code> if this node references a single element.
   */
  public boolean isNodeRef();

}
// arch-tag: 1db6efd61cfd135d3ba783e189fa4f54 *-
