tapestry-core/src/main/java/org/apache/tapestry5/Asset.java

// Copyright 2006, 2008, 2009, 2013 The Apache Software Foundation
//
// Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
// you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
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//     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
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package org.apache.tapestry5;

import org.apache.tapestry5.ioc.Resource;

/**
 * An Asset is any kind of resource that can be exposed to the client web browser. Although quite often an Asset is a
 * resource in a web application's context folder, within Tapestry, Assets may also be resources on the classpath (i.e.,
 * packaged inside JARs).
 * <p/>
 * An Asset's toString() will return the URL for the resource (the same value as {@link #toClientURL()}).
 * <p/>
 * Release 5.1.0.0 introduced {@link org.apache.tapestry5.Asset2}, which extends this interface with an additional
 * method.
 *
 * @see org.apache.tapestry5.services.AssetPathConverter
 */
public interface Asset
{
    /**
     * Returns a URL that can be passed, unchanged, to the client in order for it to access the resource. The same value
     * is returned from <code>toString()</code>.
     * <p/>
     * Tapestry's built-in asset types (context and classpath) always incorporate a checksum as part of the path,
     * and alternate implementations are encouraged to do so as well. In addition, Tapestry ensures that context and
     * classpath assets have a far-future expires header (to ensure aggressive caching by the client).
     * <p/>Note that starting in Tapestry 5.4, it is expected that Asset instances recognize
     * when the underlying Resource's content has changed, and update the clientURL to reflect the new content's
     * checksum. This wasn't an issue in earlier releases where the clientURL incorporated a version number.
     * <p/>
     * Finally, starting in 5.4, this value will often be <em>variant</em>: the exact URL returned will depend on
     * whether the underlying resource content is compressable, whether the current {@link org.apache.tapestry5.services.Request}
     * supports compression.
     *
     * @see org.apache.tapestry5.services.AssetSource
     * @see org.apache.tapestry5.services.AssetPathConverter
     */
    String toClientURL();

    /**
     * Returns the underlying Resource for the Asset.
     */
    Resource getResource();

}