/*******************************************************************************
 * Copyright (c) 1998, 2008 Oracle. All rights reserved.
 * This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the 
 * terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0 and Eclipse Distribution License v. 1.0 
 * which accompanies this distribution. 
 * The Eclipse Public License is available at http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
 * and the Eclipse Distribution License is available at 
 * http://www.eclipse.org/org/documents/edl-v10.php.
 *
 * Contributors:
 *     Oracle - initial API and implementation from Oracle TopLink
 ******************************************************************************/  
package org.eclipse.persistence.internal.oxm.record;

import org.eclipse.persistence.internal.oxm.NodeValue;
import org.eclipse.persistence.internal.oxm.XPathFragment;
import org.eclipse.persistence.internal.oxm.XPathNode;
import org.eclipse.persistence.internal.sessions.AbstractSession;
import org.eclipse.persistence.mappings.DatabaseMapping;
import org.eclipse.persistence.oxm.NamespaceResolver;
import org.eclipse.persistence.oxm.record.MarshalRecord;

/**
 * The MarshalContext allows mappings to be marshalled differently depending on 
 * the type of object.  For example POJOs are marshalled based on the order in
 * which mappings were added to the descriptor, while sequenced objects are based
 * on the order of their Setting objects.  
 */
public interface MarshalContext {

	/**
	 * @return Return the MarshalContext at the specified position.
	 */
    public MarshalContext getMarshalContext(int index);

    /**
     * @return The number of non-attribute children.  For POJOs this is
     * based on the number of non-attribute mappings, and for sequenced
     * objects this is based on the number of Setting objects.
     */
    public int getNonAttributeChildrenSize(XPathNode xPathNode);

    /**
     * @return The non-attribute child at the specified index for the 
     * specified xPathNode.
     */
    public Object getNonAttributeChild(int index, XPathNode xPathNode);

    /**
     * @return the attribute value corresponding to the object parameter. 
     */
    public Object getAttributeValue(Object object, DatabaseMapping mapping);

    /**
     * Perform a marshal using the NodeValue parameter.
     * @return If anything as marshalled as a result of this call. 
     */
    public boolean marshal(NodeValue nodeValue, XPathFragment xPathFragment, MarshalRecord marshalRecord, Object object, AbstractSession session, NamespaceResolver namespaceResolver);

}