/*
 * JBoss, Home of Professional Open Source
 * Copyright 2008, Red Hat Middleware LLC, and individual contributors
 * by the @authors tag. See the copyright.txt in the distribution for a
 * full listing of individual contributors.
 *
 * 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.enterprise.inject.spi;

/**
 * <p>
 * The container fires an event of this type for each Java class or interface 
 * it discovers in a bean archive, before it reads the declared annotations.
 * </p>
 * <p>
 * Any observer of this event is permitted to wrap and/or replace the
 * {@link javax.enterprise.inject.spi.AnnotatedType}. The container must use the
 * final value of this property, after all observers have been called, to
 * discover the types and read the annotations of the program elements.
 * </p>
 * <p>
 * For example, the following observer decorates the
 * {@link javax.enterprise.inject.spi.AnnotatedType} for every class that is
 * discovered by the container.
 * </p>
 * 
 * <pre>
 * public &lt;T&gt; void decorateAnnotatedType(@Observes ProcessAnnotatedType&lt;T&gt; pat)
 * {
 *    pat.setAnnotatedType(decorate(pat.getAnnotatedType()));
 * }
 * </pre>
 * <p>
 * If any observer method of a {@code ProcessAnnotatedType} event throws an
 * exception, the exception is treated as a definition error by the container.
 * </p>
 * 
 * @author David Allen
 * @see AnnotatedType
 * @param <X> The class being annotated
 */
public interface ProcessAnnotatedType<X>
{
   /**
    * Returns the {@link javax.enterprise.inject.spi.AnnotatedType} object that
    * will be used by the container to read the declared annotations.
    * 
    * @return the {@code AnnotatedType} object
    */
   public AnnotatedType<X> getAnnotatedType();

   /**
    * Replaces the {@link javax.enterprise.inject.spi.AnnotatedType}.
    * 
    * @param type the new {@link javax.enterprise.inject.spi.AnnotatedType}
    *           object to use
    */
   public void setAnnotatedType(AnnotatedType<X> type);

   /**
    * Forces the container to ignore this type.
    */
   public void veto();
}