001/**
002 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
003 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
004 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
005 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
006 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
007 * the License.  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 */
017package org.apache.camel;
018
019import java.lang.annotation.Documented;
020import java.lang.annotation.ElementType;
021import java.lang.annotation.Retention;
022import java.lang.annotation.RetentionPolicy;
023import java.lang.annotation.Target;
024
025/**
026 * Marks a method as having a specific kind of {@link ExchangePattern} for use with
027 * <a href="http://camel.apache.org/bean-integration.html">Bean Integration</a> or
028 * <a href="http://camel.apache.org/spring-remoting.html">Spring Remoting</a>
029 * to overload the default value which is {@link ExchangePattern#InOut} for request/reply if no annotations are used.
030 *
031 * There are abbreviation annotations like {@link InOnly} or {@link InOut} which are typically used for
032 * the common message exchange patterns. You could also add this annotation onto your own custom annotation to default
033 * the message exchange pattern when your own annotation is added to a method
034 * <a href="using-exchange-pattern-annotations.html">as in this example</a>.
035 *
036 * This annotation can be added to individual methods or added to a class or interface to act as a default for all methods
037 * within the class or interface.
038 *
039 * See the <a href="using-exchange-pattern-annotations.html">using exchange pattern annotations</a>
040 * for more details on how the overloading rules work.
041 *
042 * @see InOut
043 * @see InOnly
044 * @see ExchangePattern
045 * @see Exchange#getPattern()
046 *
047 * @version 
048 */
049@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
050@Documented
051@Target({ElementType.TYPE, ElementType.METHOD})
052public @interface Pattern {
053
054    /**
055     * Specifies the exchange pattern to be used for this method
056     */
057    ExchangePattern value();
058}