/*
 * JBoss, Home of Professional Open Source
 * Copyright 2012, Red Hat Middleware LLC, and individual contributors
 * by the @authors tag. See the copyright.txt in the distribution for a
 * full listing of individual contributors.
 *
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */
package org.jboss.shrinkwrap.resolver.api;

/**
 * Represents a single coordinate; an address in a repository-based system which may point to an artifact. Systems may
 * each have their own syntax for parsing the canonical {@link String} form of a {@link Coordinate}, or supply their own
 * builders for programmatic creation.
 *
 * @author <a href="mailto:alr@jboss.org">Andrew Lee Rubinger</a>
 */
public interface Coordinate {

    /**
     * Returns the canonical form of this {@link Coordinate}
     *
     * @return the canonical form of this {@link Coordinate}
     */
    String toCanonicalForm();

}
