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 }