com.webobjects.eoaccess
Interface EOPropertyListEncoding

All Known Implementing Classes:

EOAttribute, EOEntity, EORelationship, EOStoredProcedure

public interface EOPropertyListEncoding

The EOPropertyListEncoding interface declares methods that read and write objects to property lists, which are dictionaries containing String, NSDictionary, NSArray, and NSData objects. Classes that implement this interface must also provide a constructor that creates objects from a property list and an owner:

          public ClassName(NSDictionary propertyList, Object owner)
     

Objects created with a constructor of this type are initialized from the values in propertyList. The owner argument is optional. The newly created object isn't considered fully functional until it receives an awakeWithPropertyList message, which finishes initializing the object. The awakeWithPropertyList invocation should be deferred until after all of the objects identified in the property list have been created.

The method encodeIntoPropertyList is responsible for encoding an object into a property list for later restoration. This interface is used by the Enterprise Objects Framework to read and write modeling objects such as EOModel, EOEntity, and EOAttribute to a model file.

Method Summary

void	awakeWithPropertyList(NSDictionary dic) Finishes initializing the receiver from the property list dic, restoring references to other objects.
void	encodeIntoPropertyList(NSMutableDictionary dic) Encodes the receiver as a property list.

Method Detail

awakeWithPropertyList

public void awakeWithPropertyList(NSDictionary dic)

Finishes initializing the receiver from the property list dic, restoring references to other objects. Consequently, it should not be invoked until all other objects from dic that the receiver might reference have been created. The receiver must have been created with a constructor of the form:

          public ClassName(NSDictionary propertyList, Object owner)
     

Parameters:

dic - The property list representation of an object.

encodeIntoPropertyList

public void encodeIntoPropertyList(NSMutableDictionary dic)

Encodes the receiver as a property list. Property lists are NSDictionary objects whose values are String, NSDictionary, NSArray, and NSData objects.

Parameters:

dic - A dictionary into which to encode the receiver.