/*
 * Style.java July 2008
 *
 * Copyright (C) 2008, Niall Gallagher <niallg@users.sf.net>
 *
 * 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 org.simpleframework.xml.stream;

/**
 * The <code>Style</code> interface is used to represent an XML style
 * that can be applied to a serialized object. A style can be used to
 * modify the element and attribute names for the generated document.
 * Styles can be used to generate hyphenated or camel case XML.
 * <pre>
 * 
 *    &lt;example-element&gt;
 *        &lt;child-element example-attribute='example'&gt;
 *           &lt;inner-element&gt;example&lt;/inner-element&gt;
 *        &lt;/child-element&gt;
 *     &lt;/example-element&gt;
 *     
 * </pre>
 * Above the hyphenated XML elements and attributes can be generated
 * from a style implementation. Styles enable the same objects to be
 * serialized in different ways, generating different styles of XML
 * without having to modify the class schema for that object.    
 * 
 * @author Niall Gallagher
 */
public interface Style {
  
   /**
    * This is used to generate the XML element representation of 
    * the specified name. Element names should ensure to keep the
    * uniqueness of the name such that two different names will
    * be styled in to two different strings.
    * 
    * @param name this is the element name that is to be styled
    * 
    * @return this returns the styled name of the XML element
    */
   String getElement(String name);
   
   /**
    * This is used to generate the XML attribute representation of 
    * the specified name. Attribute names should ensure to keep the
    * uniqueness of the name such that two different names will
    * be styled in to two different strings.
    * 
    * @param name this is the attribute name that is to be styled
    * 
    * @return this returns the styled name of the XML attribute
    */
   String getAttribute(String name);
}