org.xbrlapi.aspects
Interface AspectValue

All Superinterfaces:

AspectHandler, Serializable

All Known Implementing Classes:

AspectValueImpl, ConceptAspectValue, EntityAspectValue, ExplicitDimensionAspectValue, LocationAspectValue, PeriodAspectValue, ScenarioAspectValue, ScenarioRemainderAspectValue, SegmentAspectValue, SegmentRemainderAspectValue, TupleAspectValue, TypedDimensionAspectValue, UnitAspectValue

public interface AspectValue
extends AspectHandler, Serializable

Aspect values

Each fact may have a value for an aspect. Such a value is referred to as an aspect value. An aspect defines a mapping from a fact to the associated aspect value or to the missing aspect value for that aspect, for facts that do not have a value defined for the aspect.

Aspect values have the following characteristics:

• Each aspect value is associated with a specific aspect that has its own unique aspect type. Aspect values for different aspects cannot be equal.
• Semantically equivalent aspect values can be identified as such based upon the value of a single property of the aspect value: its identifier.
• Aspect values can have a heirarchical ordering. Thus, an aspect value can have a single parent aspect value and multiple child aspect values. Also, sibling aspect values can have a strict ordering.
• Aspect values always have human readable labels. These can be in multiple languages/locales, where appropriate.
• Aspect values define a mapping from the aspect identifier to the aspect value labels.
• It must always be possible to construct an aspect value without resorting to obtaining one from an XBRL fact. This is required to enable filtering of XBRL data by aspect without having to start with actual XBRL data with the required aspect values. This implies that aspect values are not defined in terms of specific XBRL fragments.

Note that aspect values store the information necessary to enable the determination of their appropriate human-readable labels in various locales. In some cases this information will best be a fragment index. In others, it might be an element QName or an XPointer expression. The details of the information recorded in an aspect value to enable determination of aspect value labels are private to aspect value implementations.

• Do we need to record the aspect label in all possible languages?
• We need to record the aspect type rather than the aspect object as part of the aspect value identifier.

Author:

Geoff Shuetrim (geoff@galexy.net)

Method Summary

String	getId() This method must be implemented by each concrete aspect value class.
boolean	isMissing() This method must be implemented by each concrete aspect value class.

Methods inherited from interface org.xbrlapi.aspects.AspectHandler

getAspectId

Method Detail

getId

String getId()

This method must be implemented by each concrete aspect value class. The identifier associated with a "missing-value" aspect value is implementation dependent. You cannot assume that it will be the empty string or a null value.

Returns:

the string value that uniquely identifies this aspect value, for a given aspect. This value is not generally human readable. The label handler methods are more suitable for obtaining human readable representations of aspect values. A unique value for missing aspect values needs to be generated by implementations of this method.

isMissing

boolean isMissing()

This method must be implemented by each concrete aspect value class.

Returns:

true if this aspect value represents a missing value and false otherwise.