/**
 * Copyright 2007 Dr. Matthias Laux
 *
 * Licensed 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 ml.options;

/**
 * Constraints implementing this interface have - beyond the {@link Constraint} interface - the capability
 * to be created through XML configuration files. In this case, a public no-arg constructor
 * is also required.
 */
public interface XMLConstraint extends Constraint {

    /**
     * This method is used to initialize a constraint based on data read from an XML configuration 
     * file. The method is invoked internally during setup with the instance of 
     * {@link Constrainable} to which the constraint applies and a list of JDOM elements,
     * which contain the details about the constraint itself. 
     * <p>
     * This method initializes the constraint and attaches it to the list of constraints
     * of the {@link Constrainable} instance. 
     * <p>
     * @param constrainable The {@link Constrainable} instance to which this constraint applies
     * @param list          A list of JDOM elements to be used to initialize the constraint. Specifically, 
     *                      these are tags of the form 
     *                      <p>
     *                      <code>&lt;param name="..." value="..." /&gt;</code>
     *                      <p>
     *                      containing key/value pairs with information. The expected pairs are specific 
     *                      to each implementation.
     */
    public void init(Constrainable constrainable, java.util.List<org.jdom.Element> list);
}