/*
 * 
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
 * to you 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.apache.qpid.server.security.access.config;

import java.io.File;

import org.apache.commons.configuration.ConfigurationException;

public interface ConfigurationFile
{
    /**
     * Return the actual {@link File}  object containing the configuration.
     */
    File getFile();
    
    /**
     * Load this configuration file's contents into a {@link RuleSet}.
     * 
     * @throws ConfigurationException if the configuration file has errors.
     * @throws IllegalArgumentException if individual tokens cannot be parsed.
     */
    RuleSet load() throws ConfigurationException;
    
    /**
     * Reload this configuration file's contents.
     * 
     * @throws ConfigurationException if the configuration file has errors.
     * @throws IllegalArgumentException if individual tokens cannot be parsed.
     */
    RuleSet reload() throws ConfigurationException;
        
    RuleSet getConfiguration();
    
    /**
     * TODO document me.
     */
    boolean save(RuleSet configuration);
}