Interface AnnotationDB

All Known Implementing Classes:
IndexedAnnotationDB, LazyFilteredAnnotationDB, LazySearchedAnnotationDB, MergingAnnotationDB, SimpleAnnotationDB

public interface AnnotationDB

A database of Annotation instances.

It is often a pain to provide explicit API for a particular file format, but it is still necisary to present it as some collection of structured objects. Annotation, together with AnnotationType are capable of representing structured data and the tag-value parser API is uniquely suited to creating these from structured text files. AnnotationDB is provided as a way to wrap up a whole collection of Annotation instances so that they can be queried and handled as a unit.

Since:
1.3
Author:
Matthew Pocock
  • Field Summary

    Fields
    Modifier and Type
    Field
    Description
    static final AnnotationDB
    An AnnotationDB that is always empty.
  • Method Summary

    Modifier and Type
    Method
    Description
    Find all Annotation instances in this DB that are of a particular type.
    The name of this AnnotationDB.
    Get an AnnotationType that accepts all Annotation instances in this DB.
    Loop over each Annotation in this db.
    Find all Annotation instances in this DB and any Annotations that are child properties of these that match an AnnotationType.
    int
    The number of Annotation instances in the DB.
  • Field Details

  • Method Details

    • getName

      The name of this AnnotationDB.

      Returns:
      the name of this AnnotationDB
    • getSchema

      Get an AnnotationType that accepts all Annotation instances in this DB.

      The schema should accept all Annotations in the DB. However, it may hit other Annotations. So, AnnotationType.ALL is always a valid schema. Obviously, the more retrictive it is, the more usefull it becomes for introspection.

      Returns:
      the schema AnnotationType
    • iterator

      Loop over each Annotation in this db.
      Returns:
      an Iterator over each item in the DB
    • size

      int size()
      The number of Annotation instances in the DB.
      Returns:
      the size of this DB
    • filter

      Find all Annotation instances in this DB that are of a particular type.
      Parameters:
      at - the AnnotationType to match
      Returns:
      an AnnotationDB with all matching Annotation instances
    • search

      Find all Annotation instances in this DB and any Annotations that are child properties of these that match an AnnotationType.
      Parameters:
      at - the AnnotationType to search with
      Returns:
      an AnnotationDB with all matching Annotation instances, irregardless of how deep in the hieracy they are