/******************************************************************************
 * JBoss, a division of Red Hat                                               *
 * Copyright 2006, Red Hat Middleware, LLC, and individual                    *
 * contributors as indicated by the @authors tag. See the                     *
 * copyright.txt in the distribution for a full listing of                    *
 * individual contributors.                                                   *
 *                                                                            *
 * This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it            *
 * under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as                *
 * published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of           *
 * the License, or (at your option) any later version.                        *
 *                                                                            *
 * This software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,           *
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of             *
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU           *
 * Lesser General Public License for more details.                            *
 *                                                                            *
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public           *
 * License along with this software; if not, write to the Free                *
 * Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA         *
 * 02110-1301 USA, or see the FSF site: http://www.fsf.org.                   *
 ******************************************************************************/
package javax.portlet;

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;

/**
 * The <CODE>ActionRequest</CODE> represents the request sent to the portlet to handle an action. It extends the
 * PortletRequest interface to provide action request information to portlets.<br> The portlet container creates an
 * <CODE>ActionRequest</CODE> object and passes it as argument to the portlet's <CODE>processAction</CODE> method.
 *
 * @author <a href="mailto:julien@jboss.org">Julien Viet</a>
 * @version $Revision: 5441 $
 * @see PortletRequest
 * @see RenderRequest
 */
public interface ActionRequest extends PortletRequest
{
   /**
    * Returns the name of the character encoding used in the body of this request. This method returns <code>null</code>
    * if the request does not specify a character encoding.
    *
    * @return a <code>String</code> containing the name of the chararacter encoding, or <code>null</code> if the
    * request does not specify a character encoding.
    */
   String getCharacterEncoding();

   /**
    * Returns the length, in bytes, of the request body which is made available by the input stream, or -1 if the length
    * is not known.
    *
    * @return an integer containing the length of the request body or -1 if the length is not known
    */
   int getContentLength();

   /**
    * Returns the MIME type of the body of the request, or null if the type is not known.
    *
    * @return a <code>String</code> containing the name of the MIME type of the request, or null if the type is not
    * known.
    */
   String getContentType();

   /**
    * Retrieves the body of the HTTP request from client to portal as binary data using an <CODE>InputStream</CODE>.
    * Either this method or {@link #getReader} may be called to read the body, but not both.
    * For HTTP POST data of type application/x-www-form-urlencoded this method throws an
    * <code>IllegalStateException</code> as this data has been already processed by the portal/portlet-container and is
    * available as request parameters.
    *
    * @return an input stream containing the body of the request
    * @throws java.lang.IllegalStateException
    *                             if getReader was already called, or it is a HTTP POST data of type
    *                             application/x-www-form-urlencoded
    * @throws java.io.IOException if an input or output exception occurred
    */
   InputStream getPortletInputStream() throws IllegalStateException, IOException;

   /**
    * Retrieves the body of the HTTP request from the client to the portal as character data using a
    * <code>BufferedReader</code>.  The reader translates the character data according to the character encoding used on
    * the body. Either this method or {@link #getPortletInputStream} may be called to read the body, not both.
    * For HTTP POST data of type application/x-www-form-urlencoded this method throws an
    * <code>IllegalStateException</code> as this data has been already processed by the portal/portlet-container and is
    * available as request parameters.
    *
    * @throws java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException
    *                             if the character set encoding used is not supported and the text cannot be decoded
    * @throws java.lang.IllegalStateException
    *                             if {@link #getPortletInputStream} method has been called on this request,  it is a
    *                             HTTP POST data of type application/x-www-form-urlencoded.
    * @throws java.io.IOException if an input or output exception occurred
    * @return a <code>BufferedReader</code> containing the body of the request
    * @see #getPortletInputStream
    */
   BufferedReader getReader() throws UnsupportedEncodingException, IllegalStateException, IOException;

   /**
    * Overrides the name of the character encoding used in the body of this request. This method must be called prior to
    * reading input using {@link #getReader} or {@link #getPortletInputStream}.
    * This method only sets the character set for the Reader that the {@link #getReader} method returns.
    *
    * @param   enc   a <code>String</code> containing the name of the chararacter encoding.
    * @exception java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException if this is not a valid encoding
    * @exception java.lang.IllegalStateException if this method is called after reading request parameters or reading
    * input using <code>getReader()</code>
    */
   void setCharacterEncoding(String enc) throws UnsupportedEncodingException, IllegalStateException;
}
