/*
 * Server.java February 2001
 *
 * 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;

/**
 * The <code>Server</code> interface represents a handler that is used to
 * process <code>Socket</code> objects. Implementations of this object will read
 * HTTP requests for the provided sockets and dispatch the requests for
 * processing by the core protocol handler.
 * <p>
 * The intended use of a <code>Server</code> is that it be used in conjunction
 * with a <code>Container</code> object, which acts as the primary protocol
 * handler for a server. Typically the server will deliver callbacks to a
 * container with both <code>Request</code> and <code>Response</code> objects
 * encapsulating the transaction.
 * <p>
 * Core responsibilities of the server are to manage connections, to ensure that
 * all HTTP requests are collected, and to dispatch the collected requests to an
 * appropriate handler. It is also required to manage multiplexing such that
 * many connections can be processed concurrently without a high latency period.
 * 
 * @author Niall Gallagher
 */
public interface Server {

    /**
     * Used to process the <code>Socket</code> which is a full duplex
     * communication link that may contain several HTTP requests. This will be
     * used to read the requests from the <code>Socket</code> and to pass these
     * requests to a <code>Container</code> for processing.
     * <p>
     * Typical usage of this method is to accept multiple sockets objects, each
     * representing a unique HTTP channel to the client, and process requests
     * from those sockets concurrently.
     * 
     * @param socket
     *            this is the connected HTTP socket to process
     */
    void process(Socket socket) throws IOException;

    /**
     * This method is used to stop the <code>Server</code> such that it will
     * accept no more sockets. Stopping the server ensures that all resources
     * occupied will be released. This is required so that all threads are
     * stopped, and all memory is 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;
}