/**
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
 * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file
 * to you 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.
 */
/*
 * Copyright 2005 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
 */
/*
 * $Id: URIReference.java 1092655 2011-04-15 10:24:18Z coheigea $
 */
package javax.xml.crypto;

/**
 * Identifies a data object via a URI-Reference, as specified by 
 * <a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt">RFC 2396</a>.
 *
 * <p>Note that some subclasses may not have a <code>type</code> attribute
 * and for objects of those types, the {@link #getType} method always returns 
 * <code>null</code>. 
 *
 * @author Sean Mullan
 * @author JSR 105 Expert Group
 * @see URIDereferencer
 */
public interface URIReference {

    /**
     * Returns the URI of the referenced data object.
     *
     * @return the URI of the data object in RFC 2396 format (may be
     *    <code>null</code> if not specified)
     */
    String getURI();

    /**
     * Returns the type of data referenced by this URI.
     *
     * @return the type (a URI) of the data object (may be <code>null</code> 
     *    if not specified)
     */
    String getType();
}
