001/*
002 *  Copyright 2001-2013 Stephen Colebourne
003 *
004 *  Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
005 *  you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
006 *  You may obtain a copy of the License at
007 *
008 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
009 *
010 *  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
011 *  distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
012 *  WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
013 *  See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
014 *  limitations under the License.
015 */
016package org.joda.beans;
017
018import java.util.Map;
019
020/**
021 * A map of properties that is linked to a specific bean.
022 * <p>
023 * For a JavaBean, this will ultimately wrap get/set method pairs.
024 * Alternate implementations may perform any logic to obtain the value.
025 * 
026 * @author Stephen Colebourne
027 */
028public interface PropertyMap extends Map<String, Property<?>> {
029
030    /**
031     * Flattens the contents of this property map to a {@code Map}.
032     * <p>
033     * The returned map will contain all the properties from the bean with their actual values.
034     * 
035     * @return the unmodifiable map of property name to value, not null
036     */
037    Map<String, Object> flatten();
038
039}