001 /*
002 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
003 * contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
004 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
005 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
006 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
007 * the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
008 *
009 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
010 *
011 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
012 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
013 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
014 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
015 * limitations under the License.
016 */
017 package org.apache.commons.lang.text;
018
019 import java.text.Format;
020 import java.util.Locale;
021
022 /**
023 * Format factory.
024 *
025 * @author Apache Software Foundation
026 * @since 2.4
027 * @version $Id: FormatFactory.java 905636 2010-02-02 14:03:32Z niallp $
028 */
029 public interface FormatFactory {
030
031 /**
032 * Create or retrieve a format instance.
033 *
034 * @param name The format type name
035 * @param arguments Arguments used to create the format instance. This allows the
036 * <code>FormatFactory</code> to implement the "format style"
037 * concept from <code>java.text.MessageFormat</code>.
038 * @param locale The locale, may be null
039 * @return The format instance
040 */
041 Format getFormat(String name, String arguments, Locale locale);
042
043 }