1/**
2 * $RCSfile$
3 * $Revision$
4 * $Date$
5 *
6 * Copyright 2003-2007 Jive Software.
7 *
8 * All rights reserved. Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
9 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
10 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
11 *
12 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
13 *
14 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
15 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
16 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
17 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
18 * limitations under the License.
19 */
20
21package org.jivesoftware.smack.provider;
22
23import org.jivesoftware.smack.packet.PacketExtension;
24import org.xmlpull.v1.XmlPullParser;
25
26/**
27 * An interface for parsing custom packets extensions. Each PacketExtensionProvider must
28 * be registered with the ProviderManager class for it to be used. Every implementation
29 * of this interface <b>must</b> have a public, no-argument constructor.
30 *
31 * @author Matt Tucker
32 */
33public interface PacketExtensionProvider {
34
35    /**
36     * Parse an extension sub-packet and create a PacketExtension instance. At
37     * the beginning of the method call, the xml parser will be positioned on the
38     * opening element of the packet extension. At the end of the method call, the
39     * parser <b>must</b> be positioned on the closing element of the packet extension.
40     *
41     * @param parser an XML parser.
42     * @return a new IQ instance.
43     * @throws java.lang.Exception if an error occurs parsing the XML.
44     */
45    public PacketExtension parseExtension(XmlPullParser parser) throws Exception;
46}
47