/* AnnotationMirror.java -- Represents an annotation.
   Copyright (C) 2012  Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This file is part of GNU Classpath.

GNU Classpath is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
any later version.

GNU Classpath is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with GNU Classpath; see the file COPYING.  If not, write to the
Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA
02110-1301 USA.

Linking this library statically or dynamically with other modules is
making a combined work based on this library.  Thus, the terms and
conditions of the GNU General Public License cover the whole
combination.

As a special exception, the copyright holders of this library give you
permission to link this library with independent modules to produce an
executable, regardless of the license terms of these independent
modules, and to copy and distribute the resulting executable under
terms of your choice, provided that you also meet, for each linked
independent module, the terms and conditions of the license of that
module.  An independent module is a module which is not derived from
or based on this library.  If you modify this library, you may extend
this exception to your version of the library, but you are not
obligated to do so.  If you do not wish to do so, delete this
exception statement from your version. */

package javax.lang.model.element;

import java.util.Map;

import javax.lang.model.type.DeclaredType;

/**
 * Represents an annotation.  An annotation associates values
 * with the elements of an annotation type.  Annotations should
 * be compared using {@link #equals(Object)}.  There is no guarantee
 * that the same annotation is always represented by the same
 * instance.
 *
 * @author Andrew John Hughes (gnu_andrew@member.fsf.org)
 * @since 1.6
 */
public interface AnnotationMirror
{

  /**
   * Returns the type of this annotation.
   *
   * @return the type of this annotation.
   */
  DeclaredType getAnnotationType();

  /**
   * Returns a map of elements to their values.  Only those
   * elements explicitly set in the annotation are present;
   * default values are not included.  To obtain the default
   * values as well, use
   * {@link javax.lang.model.util.Elements#getElementValuesWithDefaults(AnnotationMirror)}
   * A marker annotation, by definition, returns an empty map.
   * The order of the elements in the map follows that of the
   * source code.
   *
   * @return the map of elements to values.
   */
  Map<? extends ExecutableElement, ? extends AnnotationValue> getElementValues();

}