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     */
017    package org.apache.camel;
018    
019    /**
020     * Provides a channel on which clients can create and invoke message exchanges
021     * on an {@link Endpoint}
022     * 
023     * @version $Revision: 35332 $
024     */
025    public interface Producer<E extends Exchange> extends Processor, Service {
026    
027        Endpoint<E> getEndpoint();
028    
029        /**
030         * Creates a new exchange to send to this endpoint
031         * 
032         * @return a newly created exchange
033         */
034        E createExchange();
035    
036        /**
037         * Creates a new exchange of the given pattern to send to this endpoint
038         *
039         * @return a newly created exchange
040         */
041        E createExchange(ExchangePattern pattern);
042    
043        /**
044         * Creates a new exchange for communicating with this exchange using the
045         * given exchange to pre-populate the values of the headers and messages
046         */
047        E createExchange(E exchange);
048    }