1 /*
2 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
3 * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file
4 * distributed with this work for additional information
5 * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file
6 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
7 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
8 * with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
9 *
10 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
11 *
12 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
13 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
14 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
15 * KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the
16 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
17 * under the License.
18 */
19 package org.apache.shiro.lang.util;
20
21 /**
22 * Generics-aware interface supporting the
23 * <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_method_pattern">Factory Method</a> design pattern.
24 *
25 * @param <T> The type of the instance returned by the Factory implementation.
26 * @since 1.0
27 */
28 public interface Factory<T> {
29
30 /**
31 * Returns an instance of the required type. The implementation determines whether or not a new or cached
32 * instance is created every time this method is called.
33 *
34 * @return an instance of the required type.
35 */
36 T getInstance();
37 }