1 /*
2 * $Header: /home/jerenkrantz/tmp/commons/commons-convert/cvs/home/cvs/jakarta-commons//httpclient/src/java/org/apache/commons/httpclient/methods/RequestEntity.java,v 1.4 2004/05/17 21:46:03 olegk Exp $
3 * $Revision: 480424 $
4 * $Date: 2006-11-29 06:56:49 +0100 (Wed, 29 Nov 2006) $
5 *
6 * ====================================================================
7 *
8 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
9 * contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
10 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
11 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
12 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
13 * the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
14 *
15 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
16 *
17 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
18 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
19 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
20 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
21 * limitations under the License.
22 * ====================================================================
23 *
24 * This software consists of voluntary contributions made by many
25 * individuals on behalf of the Apache Software Foundation. For more
26 * information on the Apache Software Foundation, please see
27 * <http://www.apache.org/>.
28 *
29 */
30
31 package org.apache.commons.httpclient.methods;
32
33 import java.io.IOException;
34 import java.io.OutputStream;
35
36 /**
37 * @since 3.0
38 */
39 public interface RequestEntity {
40
41 /**
42 * Tests if {@link #writeRequest(OutputStream)} can be called more than once.
43 *
44 * @return <tt>true</tt> if the entity can be written to {@link OutputStream} more than once,
45 * <tt>false</tt> otherwise.
46 */
47 boolean isRepeatable();
48
49 /**
50 * Writes the request entity to the given stream.
51 * @param out
52 * @throws IOException
53 */
54 void writeRequest(OutputStream out) throws IOException;
55
56 /**
57 * Gets the request entity's length. This method should return a non-negative value if the content
58 * length is known or a negative value if it is not. In the latter case the
59 * {@link org.apache.commons.httpclient.methods.EntityEnclosingMethod} will use chunk encoding to
60 * transmit the request entity.
61 *
62 * @return a non-negative value when content length is known or a negative value when content length
63 * is not known
64 */
65 long getContentLength();
66
67 /**
68 * Gets the entity's content type. This content type will be used as the value for the
69 * "Content-Type" header.
70 * @return the entity's content type
71 * @see org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpMethod#setRequestHeader(String, String)
72 */
73 String getContentType();
74
75 }