/*
 *  Copyright 2006 Columbia University.
 *
 *  This file is part of MEAPsoft.
 *
 *  MEAPsoft is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 *  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as
 *  published by the Free Software Foundation.
 *
 *  MEAPsoft is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
 *  WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 *  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
 *  General Public License for more details.
 *
 *  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 *  along with MEAPsoft; if not, write to the Free Software
 *  Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA
 *  02110-1301 USA
 *
 *  See the file "COPYING" for the text of the license.
 */

package com.meapsoft;

import java.io.BufferedWriter;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.Serializable;
import java.io.StringWriter;
import java.io.Writer;

/**
 * Representation of a MEAPsoft file.
 *
 * @author Ron Weiss (ronw@ee.columbia.edu)
 */

public abstract class MEAPFile implements Serializable
{
    public String filename;
    
    // have we read this file in yet?
    public boolean haveReadFile = false;

    // have we written this file yet?
    public boolean haveWrittenFile = false;
	
    /**
     * Parse this MEAPFile.
     */
    public abstract void readFile() throws IOException, ParserException;

    /**
     * Write out properly formatted representation of this object
     */
    protected abstract void write(Writer w) throws IOException;

    /**
     * Write the file represented by this object.
     */
    public void writeFile() throws IOException
    {
        writeFile(filename);
    }

    /**
     * Write the file represented by this object.
     */
    public void writeFile(String fn) throws IOException
    {
        writeFile(fn, false);
    }

    /**
     * Write the file represented by this object.
     *
     * If append is false, fn will be overwritten.
     */
    public void writeFile(String fn, boolean append) throws IOException
    {
        if(fn == null)
            fn = filename;

        // only append if we are outputting to a different file
        BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(fn, append));
        write(out);
        out.close();

        haveWrittenFile = true;
    }

    /**
     * Returns a String representing the properly formatted contents
     * of this file
     */
    public String toString()
    {
        StringWriter s = new StringWriter();

        try { write(s); }
        // this can't happen on a StringWriter, but we must appease Java
        catch(IOException e) {;}  

        return s.toString();
    }
}