1 /*
2 * $Id$
3 *
4 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
5 * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file
6 * distributed with this work for additional information
7 * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file
8 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
9 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
10 * with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
11 *
12 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
13 *
14 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
15 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
16 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
17 * KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the
18 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
19 * under the License.
20 */
21 package org.apache.struts.dispatcher;
22
23 import java.io.Serializable;
24
25 import org.apache.struts.action.Action;
26 import org.apache.struts.chain.contexts.ActionContext;
27
28 /**
29 * This interface defines an intermediate handler that determines what method to
30 * execute in an {@link Action}. Unlike the classical <code>execute</code>
31 * signature, it is up to the dispatcher implementation to determine the
32 * particular arguments and return type.
33 *
34 * @version $Rev$
35 * @since Struts 1.4
36 */
37 public interface Dispatcher extends Serializable {
38
39 /**
40 * Dispatches to the action referenced by the specified context.
41 *
42 * @param context the current action context
43 * @return the result type, <code>null</code> if the response was handled
44 * directly, or {@link Void} if the executed method has no return
45 * signature
46 * @throws Exception if an exception occurs
47 */
48 Object dispatch(ActionContext context) throws Exception;
49
50 }