/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */
package org.apache.lucene.analysis.tokenattributes;


import org.apache.lucene.util.Attribute;
import org.apache.lucene.util.BytesRef;

The payload of a Token.

The payload is stored in the index at each position, and can
be used to influence scoring when using Payload-based queries.

NOTE: because the payload will be stored at each position, it's usually
best to use the minimum number of bytes necessary. Some codec implementations
may optimize payload storage when all payloads have the same length.
See Also:
PostingsEnum/**
 * The payload of a Token.
 * <p>
 * The payload is stored in the index at each position, and can
 * be used to influence scoring when using Payload-based queries.
 * <p>
 * NOTE: because the payload will be stored at each position, it's usually
 * best to use the minimum number of bytes necessary. Some codec implementations
 * may optimize payload storage when all payloads have the same length.
 * 
 * @see org.apache.lucene.index.PostingsEnum
 */
public interface PayloadAttribute extends Attribute {
  
Returns this Token's payload.
See Also:
setPayload(BytesRef)/**
   * Returns this Token's payload.
   * @see #setPayload(BytesRef)
   */ 
  public BytesRef getPayload();

  
Sets this Token's payload.
See Also:
getPayload()/** 
   * Sets this Token's payload.
   * @see #getPayload()
   */
  public void setPayload(BytesRef payload);
}