Negotiator.java

/*
 * Negotiator.java February 2007
 *
 * Copyright (C) 2007, Niall Gallagher <niallg@users.sf.net>
 *
 * 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 org.simpleframework.transport;

import java.io.IOException;

import org.simpleframework.transport.reactor.Reactor;

/**
 * The <code>Negotiator</code> interface represents a special kind of reactor
 * which is used to perform negotiations. Negotiations are performed on
 * <code>Pipeline</code> objects as a means to exchange data between the client
 * and server that does not form part of a HTTP request entity.
 * 
 * @author Niall Gallagher
 * 
 * @see org.simpleframework.transport.Negotiation
 */
interface Negotiator extends Reactor {

    /**
     * Once the negotiation has completed this is used to perform processing of
     * the provided transport. Processing of the transport is done only after
     * the negotiation has completed. The given transport is used to read and
     * write to the socket.
     * 
     * @param transport
     *            this is the transport for the pipeline
     */
    void process(Transport transport) throws IOException;
}