package org.apache.lucene.analysis.tokenattributes;

/*
 * 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.
 */

import org.apache.lucene.util.Attribute;
import org.apache.lucene.util.BytesRef;

/**
 * This attribute is requested by TermsHashPerField to index the contents.
 * This attribute can be used to customize the final byte[] encoding of terms.
 * <p>
 * Consumers of this attribute call {@link #getBytesRef()} up-front, and then
 * invoke {@link #fillBytesRef()} for each term. Example:
 * <pre class="prettyprint">
 *   final TermToBytesRefAttribute termAtt = tokenStream.getAttribute(TermToBytesRefAttribute.class);
 *   final BytesRef bytes = termAtt.getBytesRef();
 *
 *   while (tokenStream.incrementToken() {
 *
 *     // you must call termAtt.fillBytesRef() before doing something with the bytes.
 *     // this encodes the term value (internally it might be a char[], etc) into the bytes.
 *     int hashCode = termAtt.fillBytesRef();
 *
 *     if (isInteresting(bytes)) {
 *     
 *       // because the bytes are reused by the attribute (like CharTermAttribute's char[] buffer),
 *       // you should make a copy if you need persistent access to the bytes, otherwise they will
 *       // be rewritten across calls to incrementToken()
 *
 *       doSomethingWith(new BytesRef(bytes));
 *     }
 *   }
 *   ...
 * </pre>
 * @lucene.experimental This is a very expert API, please use
 * {@link CharTermAttributeImpl} and its implementation of this method
 * for UTF-8 terms.
 */
public interface TermToBytesRefAttribute extends Attribute {

  /** 
   * Updates the bytes {@link #getBytesRef()} to contain this term's
   * final encoding.
   */
  public void fillBytesRef();
  
  /**
   * Retrieve this attribute's BytesRef. The bytes are updated 
   * from the current term when the consumer calls {@link #fillBytesRef()}.
   * @return this Attributes internal BytesRef.
   */
  public BytesRef getBytesRef();
}
