public Interface AttributeDefinition

The BIGDECIMAL type. Attributes of this type should be stored as BigDecimal, List<BigDecimal> or BigDecimal[] objects depending on getCardinality().

The BIGINTEGER type. Attributes of this type should be stored as BigInteger, List<BigInteger> or BigInteger[] objects, depending on the getCardinality() value.

The BOOLEAN type. Attributes of this type should be stored as Boolean, List<Boolean> or boolean[] objects depending on getCardinality().

The BYTE type. Attributes of this type should be stored as Byte, List<Byte> or byte[] objects, depending on the getCardinality() value.

The CHARACTER type. Attributes of this type should be stored as Character, List<Character> or char[] objects, depending on the getCardinality() value.

The DOUBLE type. Attributes of this type should be stored as Double, List<Double> or double[] objects, depending on the getCardinality() value.

The FLOAT type. Attributes of this type should be stored as Float, List<Float> or float[] objects, depending on the getCardinality() value.

The INTEGER type. Attributes of this type should be stored as Integer, List<Integer> or int[] objects, depending on the getCardinality() value.

The LONG type. Attributes of this type should be stored as Long, List<Long> or long[] objects, depending on the getCardinality() value.

The PASSWORD type. Attributes of this type must be stored as String, List<String> or String[] objects depending on getCardinality(). A PASSWORD must be treated as a string but the type can be used to disguise the information when displayed to a user to prevent others from seeing it.

Since

1.2

The SHORT type. Attributes of this type should be stored as Short, List<Short> or short[] objects, depending on the getCardinality() value.

The STRING type.

Attributes of this type should be stored as String, List<String> or String[] objects, depending on the getCardinality() value.

Return the cardinality of this attribute. The OSGi environment handles multi valued attributes in arrays ([]) or in List objects. The return value is defined as follows:

   x = Integer.MIN_VALUE    no limit, but use List
   x < 0                    -x = max occurrences, store in List
   x > 0                     x = max occurrences, store in array []
   x = Integer.MAX_VALUE    no limit, but use array []
   x = 0                     1 occurrence required

Returns:int

The cardinality of this attribute.

Return a default for this attribute. The object must be of the appropriate type as defined by the cardinality and getType(). The return type is a list of String objects that can be converted to the appropriate type. The cardinality of the return array must follow the absolute cardinality of this type. For example, if the cardinality = 0, the array must contain 1 element. If the cardinality is 1, it must contain 0 or 1 elements. If it is -5, it must contain from 0 to max 5 elements. Note that the special case of a 0 cardinality, meaning a single value, does not allow arrays or lists of 0 elements.

Returns:String[]

Return a default value or null if no default exists.

Return a description of this attribute. The description may be localized and must describe the semantics of this type and any constraints.

Returns:String

The localized description of the definition.

Unique identity for this attribute. Attributes share a global namespace in the registry. For example, an attribute cn or commonName must always be a String and the semantics are always a name of some object. They share this aspect with LDAP/X.500 attributes. In these standards the OSI Object Identifier (OID) is used to uniquely identify an attribute. If such an OID exists, (which can be requested at several standard organizations and many companies already have a node in the tree) it can be returned here. Otherwise, a unique id should be returned which can be a Java class name (reverse domain name) or generated with a GUID algorithm. Note that all LDAP defined attributes already have an OID. It is strongly advised to define the attributes from existing LDAP schemes which will give the OID. Many such schemes exist ranging from postal addresses to DHCP parameters.

Returns:String

The id or oid

Get the name of the attribute. This name may be localized.

Returns:String

The localized name of the definition.

Return a list of labels of option values.

The purpose of this method is to allow menus with localized labels. It is associated with getOptionValues. The labels returned here are ordered in the same way as the values in that method.

If the function returns null, there are no option labels available.

This list must be in the same sequence as the getOptionValues() method. That is, for each index i in getOptionLabels, i in getOptionValues() should be the associated value.

For example, if an attribute can have the value male, female, unknown, this list can return (for dutch) new String[] { "Man", "Vrouw", "Onbekend" }.

Returns:String[]

A list values

Return a list of option values that this attribute can take.

If the function returns null, there are no option values available.

Each value must be acceptable to validate() (return "") and must be a String object that can be converted to the data type defined by getType() for this attribute.

This list must be in the same sequence as getOptionLabels(). That is, for each index i in getOptionValues, i in getOptionLabels() should be the label.

For example, if an attribute can have the value male, female, unknown, this list can return new String[] { "male", "female", "unknown" }.

Returns:String[]

A list values

Return the type for this attribute.

Defined in the following constants which map to the appropriate Java type. STRING,LONG,INTEGER, SHORT, CHARACTER, BYTE,DOUBLE,FLOAT, BOOLEAN, PASSWORD.

Returns:int

The type for this attribute.

Validate an attribute in String form. An attribute might be further constrained in value. This method will attempt to validate the attribute according to these constraints. It can return three different values:

 null           No validation present
 ""             No problems detected
 "..."          A localized description of why the value is wrong

value="  a\,b,b\,c,\ c\\,d   " => [ "a,b", "b,c", " c\", "d" ]

Parameters

value:String

The value before turning it into the basic data type. If the cardinality indicates a multi-valued attribute then the given string must be escaped.

Returns:String

null, "", or another string