001/* 002 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one 003 * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file 004 * distributed with this work for additional information 005 * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file 006 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the 007 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance 008 * with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at 009 * 010 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 011 * 012 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, 013 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an 014 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY 015 * KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the 016 * specific language governing permissions and limitations 017 * under the License. 018 */ 019package org.apache.shiro.util; 020 021/** 022 * Generics-aware interface supporting the 023 * <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_method_pattern">Factory Method</a> design pattern. 024 * 025 * @param <T> The type of the instance returned by the Factory implementation. 026 * @since 1.0 027 */ 028public interface Factory<T> { 029 030 /** 031 * Returns an instance of the required type. The implementation determines whether or not a new or cached 032 * instance is created every time this method is called. 033 * 034 * @return an instance of the required type. 035 */ 036 T getInstance(); 037}