package jalview.ws;

import jalview.datamodel.AlignmentI;

import java.util.Hashtable;

import com.stevesoft.pat.Regex;
/**
 * generic Reference Retrieval interface for a particular database source/version as cited in DBRefEntry.
 * TODO: add/define property to describe max number of queries that this source can cope with at once.
 * TODO: add/define mechanism for retrieval of Trees and distance matrices from a database (unify with io)
 * @author JimP
 *
 */
public interface DbSourceProxy
{
  /**
   * 
   * @return source string constant used for this DB source
   */
  public String getDbSource();
  /**
   * 
   * @return version string for this database.
   */
  public String getDbVersion();
  /**
   * Separator between individual accession queries for a database that allows multiple IDs
   * to be fetched in a single query. Null implies that only a single ID can be fetched at a time.
   * @return string for separating concatenated queries (as individually validated by the accession validator)
   */
  public String getAccessionSeparator();
  /**
   * Regular expression for checking form of query string understood by this source.
   * @return null or a validation regex
   */
  public Regex getAccessionValidator();
  /**
   * DbSource properties hash - define the capabilities of this source
   * Property hash methods defined in DbSourceProxyImpl.
   * See constants in jalview.datamodel.DBRefSource for definition of properties.
   * @return 
   */
  public Hashtable getDbSourceProperties();
  /**
   * 
   * @return a test/example query that can be used to validate retrieval and parsing mechanisms
   */
  public String getTestQuery();
  /**
   * optionally implemented
   * @param accession
   * @return
   */
  public boolean isValidReference(String accession);
  /**
   * make one or more queries to the database
   * and attempt to parse the response into an alignment
   * @param queries
   * @return null if queries were successful but result was not parsable
   * @throws Exception TODO
   */
  public AlignmentI getSequenceRecords(String queries) throws Exception;
  /**
   * 
   * @return true if a query is currently being made
   */
  public boolean queryInProgress();
  /**
   * get the raw reponse from the last set of queries
   * @return one or more string buffers for each individual query
   */
  public StringBuffer getRawRecords();
}