1/*
2 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
3 * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file
4 * distributed with this work for additional information
5 * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file
6 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the  "License");
7 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
8 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
9 *
10 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
11 *
12 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
13 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
14 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
15 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
16 * limitations under the License.
17 */
18/*
19 * $Id: XMLStringFactory.java 468655 2006-10-28 07:12:06Z minchau $
20 */
21package org.apache.xml.utils;
22
23/**
24 * A concrete class that implements this interface creates XMLString objects.
25 */
26public abstract class XMLStringFactory
27{
28
29  /**
30   * Create a new XMLString from a Java string.
31   *
32   *
33   * @param string Java String reference, which must be non-null.
34   *
35   * @return An XMLString object that wraps the String reference.
36   */
37  public abstract XMLString newstr(String string);
38
39  /**
40   * Create a XMLString from a FastStringBuffer.
41   *
42   *
43   * @param string FastStringBuffer reference, which must be non-null.
44   * @param start The start position in the array.
45   * @param length The number of characters to read from the array.
46   *
47   * @return An XMLString object that wraps the FastStringBuffer reference.
48   */
49  public abstract XMLString newstr(FastStringBuffer string, int start,
50                                   int length);
51
52  /**
53   * Create a XMLString from a FastStringBuffer.
54   *
55   *
56   * @param string FastStringBuffer reference, which must be non-null.
57   * @param start The start position in the array.
58   * @param length The number of characters to read from the array.
59   *
60   * @return An XMLString object that wraps the FastStringBuffer reference.
61   */
62  public abstract XMLString newstr(char[] string, int start,
63                                   int length);
64
65  /**
66   * Get a cheap representation of an empty string.
67   *
68   * @return An non-null reference to an XMLString that represents "".
69   */
70  public abstract XMLString emptystr();
71}
72