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}