/*
 * Policy.java November 2010
 *
 * Copyright (C) 2010, Niall Gallagher <niallg@users.sf.net>
 *
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or 
 * implied. See the License for the specific language governing 
 * permissions and limitations under the License.
 */

package org.simpleframework.xml.core;

/**
 * The <code>Policy</code> interface is used to represent the XML
 * mapping policy used by the current serialization schema. The
 * policies supported are strict and non-strict mappings. For the
 * strict mapping policy all attributes and elements within the
 * XML document must map to a field or method within the object
 * that is being serialized.
 * 
 * @author Niall Gallagher
 */
interface Policy {

   /**
    * This method is used to determine whether strict mappings are
    * required. Strict mapping means that all labels in the class
    * schema must match the XML elements and attributes in the
    * source XML document. When strict mapping is disabled, then
    * XML elements and attributes that do not exist in the schema
    * class will be ignored without breaking the parser.
    *
    * @return true if strict parsing is enabled, false otherwise
    */ 
   public boolean isStrict();
}
