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 */
017package org.apache.juneau.commons.bean;
018
019/**
020 * An object that represents another object, often wrapping that object.
021 *
022 * <p>
023 * <b>*** Internal Interface - Not intended for external use ***</b>
024 *
025 * <p>
026 * For example, {@code BeanMap} is a map representation of a bean.
027 *
028 * <p>
029 * The returned type info is a {@link BeanInfo} so the bean-modeling layer does not depend
030 * on the marshalling-side {@code ClassMeta}.  Marshalling-side implementations narrow the return
031 * type via Java covariant returns (e.g. {@code ClassMeta<T> getBeanInfo()}).
032 *
033 * @param <T> The represented class type.
034 */
035public interface Delegate<T> {
036
037   /**
038    * The {@link BeanInfo} of the class of the represented object.
039    *
040    * @return The class type of the represented object.
041    */
042   BeanInfo<T> getBeanInfo();
043}