1 /* 2 * Copyright (C) 2004 Christian Siefkes <christian@siefkes.net>. 3 * Development of this software is supported by the German Research Society, 4 * Berlin-Brandenburg Graduate School in Distributed Information Systems 5 * (DFG grant no. GRK 316). 6 * 7 * This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or 8 * modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public 9 * License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either 10 * version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. 11 * 12 * This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, 13 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of 14 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU 15 * Lesser General Public License for more details. 16 * 17 * You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public 18 * License along with this library; if not, visit 19 * http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html or write to the Free Software 20 * Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA. 21 */ 22 package de.fu_berlin.ties.context.sensor; 23 24 import org.apache.commons.collections.KeyValue; 25 26 /*** 27 * A sensor is an object that looks up information for a token, for example 28 * semantic information from gazetteers or thesauri. 29 * 30 * @author Christian Siefkes 31 * @version $Revision: 1.2 $, $Date: 2004/07/07 08:15:29 $, $Author: siefkes $ 32 */ 33 public interface Sensor { 34 35 /*** 36 * Looks up a token and returns the information as an array of key/value 37 * pairs (values can be <code>null</code>, but <code>null</code> are not 38 * allowed). If no information for the given token can be found, an 39 * empty array (length 0) is returned. 40 * 41 * @param token the token to look up 42 * @return an array of key/value pairs describing the token 43 */ 44 KeyValue[] lookup(final String token); 45 46 }