/*
* 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.commons.collections;
import java.util.Map;
/**
* Defines a map that can be iterated directly without needing to create an entry set.
* <p>
* A map iterator is an efficient way of iterating over maps.
* There is no need to access the entry set or cast to Map Entry objects.
* <pre>
* IterableMap map = new HashedMap();
* MapIterator it = map.mapIterator();
* while (it.hasNext()) {
* Object key = it.next();
* Object value = it.getValue();
* it.setValue("newValue");
* }
* </pre>
*
* @since Commons Collections 3.0
* @version $Revision: 646777 $ $Date: 2008-04-10 13:33:15 +0100 (Thu, 10 Apr 2008) $
*
* @author Stephen Colebourne
*/
public interface IterableMap extends Map {
/**
* Obtains a <code>MapIterator</code> over the map.
* <p>
* A map iterator is an efficient way of iterating over maps.
* There is no need to access the entry set or cast to Map Entry objects.
* <pre>
* IterableMap map = new HashedMap();
* MapIterator it = map.mapIterator();
* while (it.hasNext()) {
* Object key = it.next();
* Object value = it.getValue();
* it.setValue("newValue");
* }
* </pre>
*
* @return a map iterator
*/
MapIterator mapIterator();
}