Patch.java

package ca.uhn.fhir.rest.annotation;

import java.lang.annotation.ElementType;

/*
 * #%L
 * HAPI FHIR - Core Library
 * %%
 * Copyright (C) 2014 - 2017 University Health Network
 * %%
 * 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.
 * #L%
 */

import java.lang.annotation.Retention;
import java.lang.annotation.RetentionPolicy;
import java.lang.annotation.Target;

import org.hl7.fhir.instance.model.api.IBaseResource;

/**
 * RESTful method annotation to be used for the proposed FHIR
 * PATCH method
 * 
 * <p>
 * Patch is used to apply a differential to a resource in either
 * XML or JSON format
 * </p>
 */
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Target({ ElementType.METHOD })
public @interface Patch {

	/**
	 * The return type for this search method. This generally does not need
	 * to be populated for a server implementation, since servers will return
	 * only one resource per class, but generally does need to be populated
	 * for client implementations.
	 */
	// NB: Read, Search (maybe others) share this annotation, so update the javadocs everywhere
	Class<? extends IBaseResource> type() default IBaseResource.class;

}