/*
 * Processor.java February 2007
 *
 * Copyright (C) 2001, 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;

/**
 * This is the <code>Processor</code> used to process messages from a connected
 * transport. This will process each request from a provided transport and pass
 * those requests to a container. The transport provided can be either a direct
 * transport or provide some form of secure encoding such as SSL.
 * 
 * @author Niall Gallagher
 * 
 * @see org.simpleframework.transport.Transport
 */
public interface Processor {

    /**
     * This is used to process the requests from a provided transport and
     * deliver a response to those requests. A transport can be a direct
     * transport or a secure transport providing SSL.
     * <p>
     * Typical usage of this method is to accept multiple transport objects,
     * each representing a unique TCP channel to the client, and process
     * requests from those transports concurrently.
     * 
     * @param transport
     *            the transport to process requests from
     */
    void process(Transport transport) throws IOException;

    /**
     * This method is used to stop the <code>Processor</code> such that it will
     * accept no more pipelines. Stopping the processor ensures that all
     * resources occupied will be released. This is required so that all threads
     * are stopped and released.
     * <p>
     * Typically this method is called once all connections to the server have
     * been stopped. As a final act of shutting down the entire server all
     * threads must be stopped, this allows collection of unused memory and the
     * closing of file and socket resources.
     */
    void stop() throws IOException;
}