/*
 * Copyright 2001-2004 The Apache Software Foundation.
 * 
 * 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.apache.axis.encoding;

import org.apache.axis.wsdl.fromJava.Types;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import org.xml.sax.Attributes;

import javax.xml.namespace.QName;
import java.io.IOException;

/**
 * This interface describes the AXIS Serializer.
 * An Axis compliant Serializer must provide one or more
 * of the following methods:
 *
 * public <constructor>(Class javaType, QName xmlType)
 * public <constructor>()
 *
 * This will allow for construction of generic factories that introspect the class
 * to determine how to construct a deserializer.
 * The xmlType, javaType arguments are filled in with the values known by the factory.
 */
public interface Serializer extends javax.xml.rpc.encoding.Serializer {
    /**
     * Serialize an element named name, with the indicated attributes
     * and value.
     * @param name is the element name
     * @param attributes are the attributes...serialize is free to add more.
     * @param value is the value
     * @param context is the SerializationContext
     */
    public void serialize(QName name, Attributes attributes,
                          Object value, SerializationContext context)
        throws IOException;

    /**
     * Return XML schema for the specified type, suitable for insertion into
     * the &lt;types&gt; element of a WSDL document, or underneath an
     * &lt;element&gt; or &lt;attribute&gt; declaration.
     *
     * @param javaType the Java Class we're writing out schema for
     * @param types the Java2WSDL Types object which holds the context
     *              for the WSDL being generated.
     * @return a type element containing a schema simpleType/complexType
     * @see org.apache.axis.wsdl.fromJava.Types
     */
    public Element writeSchema(Class javaType, Types types) throws Exception;
}