/*
 * 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 javax.xml.soap;

/**
 * A representation of an XML name.  This interface provides methods for
 * getting the local and namespace-qualified names and also for getting the
 * prefix associated with the namespace for the name. It is also possible
 * to get the URI of the namespace.
 * <P>
 * The following is an example of a namespace declaration in an element.
 * <PRE>
 *  &lt;wombat:GetLastTradePrice xmlns:wombat="http://www.wombat.org/trader"&gt;
 * </PRE>
 * ("xmlns" stands for "XML namespace".)
 * The following
 * shows what the methods in the <code>Name</code> interface will return.
 * <UL>
 * <LI><code>getQualifiedName</code> will return "prefix:LocalName" =
 *     "WOMBAT:GetLastTradePrice"
 * <LI><code>getURI</code> will return "http://www.wombat.org/trader"
 * <LI><code>getLocalName</code> will return "GetLastTracePrice"
 * <LI><code>getPrefix</code> will return "WOMBAT"
 * </UL>
 * <P>
 * XML namespaces are used to disambiguate SOAP identifiers from
 * application-specific identifiers.
 * <P>
 * <code>Name</code> objects are created using the method
 * <code>SOAPEnvelope.createName</code>, which has two versions.
 * One method creates <code>Name</code> objects with
 * a local name, a namespace prefix, and a namespace URI.
 * and the second creates <code>Name</code> objects with just a local name.
 * The following line of
 * code, in which <i>se</i> is a <code>SOAPEnvelope</code> object, creates a new
 * <code>Name</code> object with all three.
 * <PRE>
 *    Name name = se.createName("GetLastTradePrice", "WOMBAT",
 *                               "http://www.wombat.org/trader");
 * </PRE>
 * The following line of code gives an example of how a <code>Name</code> object
 * can be used. The variable <i>element</i> is a <code>SOAPElement</code> object.
 * This code creates a new <code>SOAPElement</code> object with the given name and
 * adds it to <i>element</i>.
 * <PRE>
 *    element.addChildElement(name);
 * </PRE>
 */
public interface Name {

    /**
     * Gets the local name part of the XML name that this <code>Name</code>
     * object represents.
     * @return  a string giving the local name
     */
    public abstract String getLocalName();

    /**
     * Gets the namespace-qualified name of the XML name that this
     * <code>Name</code> object represents.
     * @return  the namespace-qualified name as a string
     */
    public abstract String getQualifiedName();

    /**
     * Returns the prefix associated with the namespace for the XML
     * name that this <code>Name</code> object represents.
     * @return  the prefix as a string
     */
    public abstract String getPrefix();

    /**
     * Returns the URI of the namespace for the XML
     * name that this <code>Name</code> object represents.
     * @return  the URI as a string
     */
    public abstract String getURI();
}
