commons-rdf-api/src/main/java/org/apache/commons/rdf/api/TripleLike.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
 *
 *     http://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.rdf.api;

/**
 * A generalised "triple-like" interface, extended by {@link Triple} and
 * {@link Quad}.
 * <p>
 * A TripleLike statement has at least a {@link #getSubject()},
 * {@link #getPredicate()} and {@link #getObject()}, but unlike a {@link Triple}
 * does not have a formalised {@link Triple#equals(Object)} or
 * {@link Triple#hashCode()} semantics and is not required to be
 * <em>immutable</em> or <em>thread-safe</em>. This interfaced can also be used
 * for <em>generalised triples</em> (e.g. a {@link BlankNode} as predicate).
 * <p>
 * Implementations should specialise which specific {@link RDFTerm} types they
 * return by overriding {@link #getSubject()}, {@link #getPredicate()} and
 * {@link #getObject()}.
 *
 *
 * @since 0.3.0-incubating
 * @see Triple
 * @see Quad
 * @see QuadLike
 */
public interface TripleLike {

    /**
     * The subject of this statement.
     *
     * @return The subject, typically an {@link IRI} or {@link BlankNode}.
     */
    RDFTerm getSubject();

    /**
     * The predicate of this statement.
     *
     * @return The predicate, typically an {@link IRI}.
     */
    RDFTerm getPredicate();

    /**
     * The object of this statement.
     *
     * @return The object, typically an {@link IRI}, {@link BlankNode} or
     *         {@link Literal}.
     */
    RDFTerm getObject();
}