/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
 * to you 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.apache.openjpa.lib.meta;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;

import org.apache.openjpa.lib.util.Closeable; // also in java.io(in 1.5)

/**
 * Iterator over metadata resources.
 *
 * @author Abe White
 */
public interface MetaDataIterator extends Closeable {

    /**
     * Return whether there is another resource to iterate over.
     */
    public boolean hasNext() throws IOException;

    /**
     * Return the next metadata resource.
     */
    public Object next() throws IOException;

    /**
     * Return the last-iterated metadata resource content as a stream.
     */
    public InputStream getInputStream() throws IOException;

    /**
     * Return the last-iterated metadata resource content as a file, or null
     * if not an extant file.
     */
    public File getFile() throws IOException;

    /**
     * Close the resources used by this iterator.
     */
    public void close();
}

