1/*
2 * $HeadURL: http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpcomponents/httpcore/trunk/module-main/src/main/java/org/apache/http/ConnectionReuseStrategy.java $
3 * $Revision: 496070 $
4 * $Date: 2007-01-14 04:18:34 -0800 (Sun, 14 Jan 2007) $
5 *
6 * ====================================================================
7 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
8 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
9 * distributed with this work for additional information
10 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
11 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
12 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
13 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
14 *
15 *   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
16 *
17 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
18 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
19 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
20 * KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
21 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
22 * under the License.
23 * ====================================================================
24 *
25 * This software consists of voluntary contributions made by many
26 * individuals on behalf of the Apache Software Foundation.  For more
27 * information on the Apache Software Foundation, please see
28 * <http://www.apache.org/>.
29 *
30 */
31
32package org.apache.http;
33
34import org.apache.http.protocol.HttpContext;
35
36/**
37 * Interface for deciding whether a connection should be kept alive.
38 *
39 * @author <a href="mailto:oleg at ural.ru">Oleg Kalnichevski</a>
40 *
41 *
42 * <!-- empty lines above to avoid 'svn diff' context problems -->
43 * @version $Revision: 496070 $
44 *
45 * @since 4.0
46 */
47public interface ConnectionReuseStrategy {
48
49    /**
50     * Decides whether a connection can be kept open after a request.
51     * If this method returns <code>false</code>, the caller MUST
52     * close the connection to correctly implement the HTTP protocol.
53     * If it returns <code>true</code>, the caller SHOULD attempt to
54     * keep the connection open for reuse with another request.
55     * <br/>
56     * One can use the HTTP context to retrieve additional objects that
57     * may be relevant for the keep-alive strategy: the actual HTTP
58     * connection, the original HTTP request, target host if known,
59     * number of times the connection has been reused already and so on.
60     * <br/>
61     * If the connection is already closed, <code>false</code> is returned.
62     * The stale connection check MUST NOT be triggered by a
63     * connection reuse strategy.
64     *
65     * @param response
66     *          The last response received over that connection.
67     * @param context   the context in which the connection is being
68     *          used.
69     *
70     * @return <code>true</code> if the connection is allowed to be reused, or
71     *         <code>false</code> if it MUST NOT be reused
72     */
73    boolean keepAlive(HttpResponse response, HttpContext context);
74
75}
76