anthill.nest
Interface Gate

All Superinterfaces:

Clearable

All Known Implementing Classes:

GateService, LocalGate

public interface Gate

extends Clearable

The Gate interface contains the set of methods used by a nest to communicate with other nests.

Gate is one of the components of a nest; the other are Manager), RequestSet, Storage and Trail.

Gate methods are invoked by AntView objects to implement methods move(), addNeighbour, getNeighbours and removeNeighbour(). The exact behavior of these methods depends on the implementation of Gate.

Version:

$Revision: 1.7 $

Author:

Alberto Montresor

Field Summary

static String

NAME Identifier used in the configuration files

Method Summary

NestId	getNestId() Returns the identifier of the nest containing this gate.
void	send(NestId dest, Ant ant, int ttl) Sends an ant to the specified nest.
void	setAntListener(AntListener listener) Sets the ant listener, i.e. the object that will accept the ants coming from other nests.

Methods inherited from interface anthill.util.Clearable

clear

Field Detail

NAME

public static final String NAME

Identifier used in the configuration files

See Also:

Constant Field Values

Method Detail

getNestId

public NestId getNestId()

Returns the identifier of the nest containing this gate.

setAntListener

public void setAntListener(AntListener listener)

Sets the ant listener, i.e. the object that will accept the ants coming from other nests.

Parameters:

listener - the listener object that will accepts the ants coming from other nests

send

public void send(NestId dest,
                 Ant ant,
                 int ttl)
          throws IOException,
                 ClassCastException

Sends an ant to the specified nest. Both the nest identifier and the ant must be serializable or externalizable.

Throws:

ClassCastException - raised if the nest identifier does not belong to the expected class

IOException - raised if problems have occurred during serialization and sending