/*******************************************************************************
 *  Copyright (c) 2004, 2009 IBM Corporation and others.
 *  All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
 *  are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
 *  which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
 *  http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
 * 
 *  Contributors:
 *     IBM Corporation - initial API and implementation
 *******************************************************************************/
package org.eclipse.core.resources;

import org.eclipse.core.runtime.CoreException;

/**
 * A storage that knows how its contents are encoded.
 * 
 * <p>The <code>IEncodedStorage</code> interface extends <code>IStorage</code>
 * in order to provide access to the charset to be used when decoding its 
 * contents. 
 * </p><p>
 * Clients may implement this interface.
 * </p>
 * 
 * @since 3.0
 */
public interface IEncodedStorage extends IStorage {
	/**
	 * Returns the name of a charset encoding to be used when decoding this 
	 * storage's contents into characters. Returns <code>null</code> if a proper 
	 * encoding cannot be determined.
	 * <p>
	 * Note that this method does not check whether the result is a supported
	 * charset name. Callers should be prepared to handle 
	 * <code>UnsupportedEncodingException</code> where this charset is used. 
	 * </p>
	 *
	 * @return the name of a charset, or <code>null</code>
	 * @exception CoreException if an error happens while determining 
	 * the charset. See any refinements for more information.
	 * @see IStorage#getContents()
	 */
	public String getCharset() throws CoreException;
}
