src/main/java/org/apache/commons/beanutils2/BeanIntrospector.java

/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *      https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */
package org.apache.commons.beanutils2;

import java.beans.IntrospectionException;

/**
 * <p>
 * Definition of an interface for components that can perform introspection on bean classes.
 * </p>
 * <p>
 * Before {@link PropertyUtils} can be used for interaction with a specific Java class, the class's properties have to be determined. This is called
 * <em>introspection</em> and is initiated automatically on demand. {@code PropertyUtils} does not perform introspection on its own, but delegates this task to
 * one or more objects implementing this interface. This makes it possible to customize introspection which may be useful for certain code bases using
 * non-standard conventions for accessing properties.
 * </p>
 *
 * @since 1.9
 */
public interface BeanIntrospector {

    /**
     * Performs introspection on a Java class. The current class to be inspected can be queried from the passed in {@code IntrospectionContext} object. A
     * typical implementation has to obtain this class, determine its properties according to the rules it implements, and add them to the passed in context
     * object.
     *
     * @param icontext The context object for interaction with the initiator of the introspection request
     * @throws IntrospectionException if an error occurs during introspection
     */
    void introspect(IntrospectionContext icontext) throws IntrospectionException;
}