/*
 *  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 java.net;

/**
 * Defines a factory which creates an {@code URLStreamHandler} for a specified
 * protocol. It is used by the class {@code URL}.
 */
public interface URLStreamHandlerFactory {

    /**
     * Creates a new {@code URLStreamHandler} instance for the given {@code
     * protocol}.
     * 
     * @param protocol
     *            the protocol for which a handler is needed.
     * @return the created handler.
     */
    URLStreamHandler createURLStreamHandler(String protocol);
}