/*
 Copyright 2008-2013 Gephi
 Authors : Mathieu Bastian <mathieu.bastian@gephi.org>
 Website : http://www.gephi.org

 This file is part of Gephi.

 DO NOT ALTER OR REMOVE COPYRIGHT NOTICES OR THIS HEADER.

 Copyright 2013 Gephi Consortium. All rights reserved.

 The contents of this file are subject to the terms of either the GNU
 General Public License Version 3 only ("GPL") or the Common
 Development and Distribution License("CDDL") (collectively, the
 "License"). You may not use this file except in compliance with the
 License. You can obtain a copy of the License at
 http://gephi.org/about/legal/license-notice/
 or /cddl-1.0.txt and /gpl-3.0.txt. See the License for the
 specific language governing permissions and limitations under the
 License.  When distributing the software, include this License Header
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 Contributor(s):

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 */
package org.gephi.appearance.api;

import org.gephi.graph.api.Element;
import org.gephi.graph.api.Graph;

/**
 * Ranking configuration for numerical attributes.
 * <p>
 * This interface has underlying access to the elements value so it can return
 * the minimum and maximum values.
 */
public interface Ranking {

    /**
     * Returns the minimum value in this ranking.
     *
     * @return minimum value
     */
    public Number getMinValue();

    /**
     * Returns the maximum value in this ranking.
     *
     * @return maximum value
     */
    public Number getMaxValue();

    /**
     * Returns the element's value for this ranking.
     *
     * @param element element to get the value for
     * @param graph graph this element belongs to
     * @return the value for this ranking
     */
    public Number getValue(Element element, Graph graph);

    /**
     * Normalizes the given value with the interpolator.
     * <p>
     * The value is first put between zero and one by doing <code>(value - min) / (max
     * - min)</code> and then passed to the given interpolator.
     *
     * @param value value to normalize
     * @param interpolator interpolator
     * @return normalized value
     */
    public float normalize(Number value, Interpolator interpolator);
}
