/*
 * 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.samoa.moa.options;

import org.apache.samoa.moa.MOAObject;
import org.apache.samoa.moa.core.ObjectRepository;
import org.apache.samoa.moa.tasks.TaskMonitor;

import com.github.javacliparser.Configurable;
import com.github.javacliparser.Options;

/**
 * Interface representing an object that handles options or parameters.
 * 
 * @author Richard Kirkby (rkirkby@cs.waikato.ac.nz)
 * @version $Revision: 7 $
 */
public interface OptionHandler extends MOAObject, Configurable {

  /**
   * Gets the purpose of this object
   * 
   * @return the string with the purpose of this object
   */
  public String getPurposeString();

  /**
   * Gets the options of this object
   * 
   * @return the options of this object
   */
  public Options getOptions();

  /**
   * This method prepares this object for use.
   * 
   */
  public void prepareForUse();

  /**
   * This method prepares this object for use.
   * 
   * @param monitor
   *          the TaskMonitor to use
   * @param repository
   *          the ObjectRepository to use
   */
  public void prepareForUse(TaskMonitor monitor, ObjectRepository repository);

  /**
   * This method produces a copy of this object.
   * 
   * @return a copy of this object
   */
  @Override
  public OptionHandler copy();

  /**
   * Gets the Command Line Interface text to create the object
   * 
   * @return the Command Line Interface text to create the object
   */
  public String getCLICreationString(Class<?> expectedType);
}