001    /*
002     * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
003     * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
004     * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
005     * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
006     * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
007     * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
008     * 
009     *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
010     * 
011     * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
012     * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
013     * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
014     * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
015     * limitations under the License.
016     */ 
017    package org.apache.commons.betwixt.strategy;
018    
019    import java.util.Map;
020    
021    import org.apache.commons.betwixt.ElementDescriptor;
022    
023    /** 
024     * A plugin Strategy pattern which will detect the plural property which
025     * maps to a singular property name.
026     * This Strategy is used when composite properties (such as properties
027     * of type Collection, List, Iterator, Enumeration) are used as we need to
028     * match the adder-method, which typically uses a singular name.
029     * This interface allows a variety of different implementations to be used.
030     * 
031     * @author <a href="mailto:jstrachan@apache.org">James Strachan</a>
032     * @version $Revision: 438373 $
033     */
034    public interface PluralStemmer {
035    
036        /**
037         * Find the plural descriptor for a singular property.
038         * 
039         * @return the plural descriptor for the given singular property name
040         *         or <code>null</code> is no matching descriptor can be found 
041         * @param propertyName is the singular property name, from the adder method
042         * @param map is a map with the keys are the property names of the available
043         *  descriptors and the values are the descriptors. This may not be null.
044         */
045        ElementDescriptor findPluralDescriptor( String propertyName, Map map );
046    
047    }