/*
 * 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.core;

import java.io.Serializable;

import com.github.javacliparser.Configurable;

/**
 * The Interface Processor.
 */
public interface Processor extends Serializable, Configurable {

  /**
   * Entry point for the {@link Processor} code. This method is called once for every event received.
   * 
   * @param event
   *          the event to be processed.
   * @return true if successful, false otherwise.
   */
  boolean process(ContentEvent event);

  /**
   * Initializes the Processor. This method is called once after the topology is set up and before any call to the
   * {@link process} method.
   * 
   * @param id
   *          the identifier of the processor.
   */
  void onCreate(int id);

  /**
   * Creates a copy of a processor. This method is used to instantiate multiple instances of the same {@link Processsor}
   * .
   * 
   * @param processor
   *          the processor to be copied.
   * 
   * @return a new instance of the {@link Processor}.
   * */
  Processor newProcessor(Processor processor); // FIXME there should be no need
                                               // for the processor as a
                                               // parameter
  // TODO can we substitute this with Cloneable?
}