001/**
002 *
003 * Copyright © 2014-2018 Florian Schmaus
004 *
005 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
006 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
007 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
008 *
009 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
010 *
011 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
012 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
013 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
014 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
015 * limitations under the License.
016 */
017
018package org.jivesoftware.smack.packet;
019
020/**
021 * Interface to represent a XML element. This is similar to {@link ExtensionElement}, but does not
022 * carry a namespace and is usually included as child element of an stanza extension.
023 */
024public interface Element {
025
026    // TODO: Add a toXML() non-parameter default method once Smack supports Java 8.
027
028    /**
029     * Returns the XML representation of this Element. This method takes an optional argument for the enclosing
030     * namespace which may be null or the empty String if the value is not known.
031     *
032     * @param enclosingNamespace the enclosing namespace or {@code null}.
033     * @return the stanza extension as XML.
034     */
035    CharSequence toXML(String enclosingNamespace);
036}