1 /*
2 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
3 * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file
4 * distributed with this work for additional information
5 * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file
6 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
7 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
8 * with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
9 *
10 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
11 *
12 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
13 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
14 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
15 * KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the
16 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
17 * under the License.
18 */
19
20 package javax.mail;
21
22 import java.io.Serializable;
23
24 /**
25 * This abstract class models the addresses in a message.
26 * Addresses are Serializable so that they may be serialized along with other search terms.
27 *
28 * @version $Rev: 467553 $ $Date: 2006-10-25 00:01:51 -0400 (Wed, 25 Oct 2006) $
29 */
30 public abstract class Address implements Serializable {
31 /**
32 * Subclasses must provide a suitable implementation of equals().
33 *
34 * @param object the object to compare t
35 * @return true if the subclass determines the other object is equal to this Address
36 */
37 public abstract boolean equals(Object object);
38
39 /**
40 * Return a String that identifies this address type.
41 * @return the type of this address
42 */
43 public abstract String getType();
44
45 /**
46 * Subclasses must provide a suitable representation of their address.
47 * @return a representation of an Address as a String
48 */
49 public abstract String toString();
50 }