/*
 * 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 com.opensymphony.xwork2.conversion;

/**
 * Determines what the key and and element class of a Map or Collection should be. For Maps, the elements are the
 * values. For Collections, the elements are the elements of the collection.
 * <p>
 * See the implementations for javadoc description for the methods as they are dependent on the concrete implementation.
 * </p>
 *
 * @author Gabriel Zimmerman
 */
public interface ObjectTypeDeterminer {

    public Class getKeyClass(Class parentClass, String property);

    public Class getElementClass(Class parentClass, String property, Object key);

    public String getKeyProperty(Class parentClass, String property);
    
    public boolean shouldCreateIfNew(Class parentClass,  String property,  Object target, String keyProperty, boolean isIndexAccessed);

}