/*
 * Copyright (c) 2013 Cisco Systems, Inc. and others.  All rights reserved.
 *
 * This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the
 * terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0 which accompanies this distribution,
 * and is available at http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
 */
package org.opendaylight.yangtools.sal.binding.model.api;

/**
 * Interface Contact is designed to hold and model java constant. In Java there
 * are no constant keywords instead of the constant is defined as static final
 * field with assigned value. For this purpose the Constant interface contains
 * methods {@link #getType()} to provide wrapped return Type of Constant,
 * {@link #getName()} the Name of constant and the {@link #getValue()} for
 * providing of value assigned to Constant. To determine of which type the
 * constant value is it is recommended firstly to retrieve Type from constant.
 * The Type interface holds base information like java package name and java
 * type name (e.g. fully qualified name). From this string user should be able
 * to determine to which type can be {@link #getValue()} type typecasted to
 * unbox and provide value assigned to constant.
 */
public interface Constant {

    /**
     * Returns the Type that declares constant.
     * 
     * @return the Type that declares constant.
     */
    Type getDefiningType();

    /**
     * Returns the return Type (or just Type) of the Constant.
     * 
     * @return the return Type (or just Type) of the Constant.
     */
    Type getType();

    /**
     * Returns the name of constant. <br>
     * By conventions the name SHOULD be in CAPITALS separated with underscores.
     * 
     * @return the name of constant.
     */
    String getName();

    /**
     * Returns boxed value that is assigned for context.
     * 
     * @return boxed value that is assigned for context.
     */
    Object getValue();

    /**
     * Returns Constant definition in formatted string. <br>
     * <br>
     * The expected string SHOULD be in format: <code>public final
     * static [Type] CONSTANT_NAME = [value];</code>
     * 
     * @return Constant definition in formatted string.
     */
    String toFormattedString();
}