001/*-
002 *******************************************************************************
003 * Copyright (c) 2011, 2016 Diamond Light Source Ltd.
004 * All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
005 * are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
006 * which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
007 * http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
008 *
009 * Contributors:
010 *    Peter Chang - initial API and implementation and/or initial documentation
011 *******************************************************************************/
012
013package org.eclipse.january.io;
014
015import java.io.IOException;
016
017import org.eclipse.january.IMonitor;
018import org.eclipse.january.metadata.IMetadata;
019
020
021/**
022 * Interface used to mark a loader as being available to load and return
023 * metadata without loading the entire file into memory.
024 */
025public interface IMetaLoader {
026
027        /**
028         * Loads the meta data from the file but not all the data.
029         * This can be read in more cheaply than the entire data.
030         * @param mon can be null
031         * @throws IOException when cannot load metadata
032         */
033        public void loadMetadata(IMonitor mon) throws IOException ;
034
035        /**
036         * Returns an object containing some data about the data file to be read in
037         *
038         * @return IMetadata
039         */
040        public IMetadata getMetadata();
041}