/*******************************************************************************
 * Copyright (c) 2004, 2008 IBM Corporation and others.
 * All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
 * are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
 * which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
 * http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
 *
 * Initial Contributors:
 * The following IBM employees contributed to the Remote System Explorer
 * component that contains this file: David McKnight, Kushal Munir, 
 * Michael Berger, David Dykstal, Phil Coulthard, Don Yantzi, Eric Simpson, 
 * Emily Bruner, Mazen Faraj, Adrian Storisteanu, Li Ding, and Kent Hawley.
 * 
 * Contributors:
 * David Dykstal (IBM) - [226561] Add API markup to RSE javadocs for extend / implement
 *******************************************************************************/

package org.eclipse.rse.core.model;

/**
 * ISystemContainer is an interface implemented by objects that can contain remote resources.
 * @noimplement This interface is not intended to be implemented by clients.
 * The standard implementations are included in the framework.
 * These can be extended by clients.
 */
public interface ISystemContainer {

	/**
	 * Returns whether the object has contents of a particular type.
	 * @param contentsType type of contents 
	 * @return <code>true</code> if the object has contents, <code>false</code> otherwise.
	 */
	public boolean hasContents(ISystemContentsType contentsType);

	/**
	 * Returns all the contents of the object (combining results of all filters 
	 * @param contentsType type of contents
	 * @return an array of contents.
	 */
	public Object[] getContents(ISystemContentsType contentsType);

	/**
	 * Indicates whether the cached object is stale
	 * @return whether the container is stale
	 */
	public boolean isStale();

	/**
	 * Marks the object as stale or not
	 * @param isStale whether the object is to be marked stale or not
	 */
	public void markStale(boolean isStale);

	/**
	 * Marks the object as stale or not
	 * @param isStale whether the object is to be marked stale or not
	 * @param clearCache indicates whether or not to clear the cache
	 */
	public void markStale(boolean isStale, boolean clearCache);

}
