/* ValueHandlerMultiFormat.java --
   Copyright (C) 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This file is part of GNU Classpath.

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it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
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permission to link this library with independent modules to produce an
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package javax.rmi.CORBA;

import org.omg.CORBA.portable.OutputStream;

import java.io.Serializable;

/**
 * This interface extends the previous ValueHandler, supporting various stream
 * format versions. The {@link ValueHandler} can be casted into this interface
 * to access additional features.
 * 
 * @since 1.5
 * 
 * @author Audrius Meskauskas, Lithuania (AudriusA@Bioinformatics.org)
 */
public interface ValueHandlerMultiFormat
  extends ValueHandler
{
  /**
   * Get the maximal supported version for the value types, supported by
   * this value handler. The versions are integer numbers, the currently valid
   * values being 1 and 2.
   * 
   * These two versions differ in how the additional data, stored by the
   * writeObject method, are encoded.
   * <ul>
   * <li> For version 1 (GNU Classpath default), that data (if present) are
   * written "as is". </li>
   * <li>For version 2, this data fragment is enclosed within a CDR custom
   * valuetype with no codebase and repository Id "RMI:org.omg.custom.<class>"
   * where <class> is the fully-qualified name of the class whose writeObject
   * method is being invoked. If the object does not write any data via
   * writeObject method, the null valuetype (0x0) must be written.</li>
   * </ul>
   * As the version number is part of the value type record, there is no need
   * to the format control during the reading.
   * 
   * @return the maximal supported version.
   */
  byte getMaximumStreamFormatVersion();

  /**
   * Write the value type to the output stream using the given format version.
   * The older method {@link ValueHandler#writeValue} always uses the version 1.
   * 
   * @param output the stream, where the value should be written, must implement
   * {@link ValueOutputStream}.
   * @param value the value that should be written.
   * @param version the version of the format that must be used to write the
   * value.
   * 
   * @throws BAD_PARAM if the version number is less than 1 or greater than the
   * maximal supported version.
   */
  void writeValue(OutputStream output, Serializable value, byte version);
}