/*
 * 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.log4j.chainsaw;

import java.beans.IntrospectionException;
import java.beans.PropertyDescriptor;

/**
 * A factory that will create new instances of Receivers
 */
public interface ChainsawReceiverFactory {
    
    /**
     * Create a new ChainsawReceiver from this factory.
     * @return 
     */
    public ChainsawReceiver create();
    
    /**
     * For the type of ChainsawReceiver that this factory creates,
     * get the property descriptors for the class.
     * @return 
     */
    public PropertyDescriptor[] getPropertyDescriptors() throws IntrospectionException;
    
    /**
     * Get the name of the receiver that this factory will create
     * @return 
     */
    public String getReceiverName();
}