The Dicer library

Using a ID policy file

Use the IDPolicyReader to parse a ID policy file:

IDPolicyReader reader = new IDPolicyReader();
IDPolicy policy = reader.read("myont-idranges.owl");

The returned IDPolicy object then allows to

• get details about the policy, such as the format of identifiers;
• get a list of all ID ranges in the policy, or unallocated ranges;
• find a range allocated to a given user;
• allocate a new range in the unallocated ID space.

When the policy object has been modified (by allocating new ranges), use the IDPolicyWriter class to write it back to a file.

The IDPolicyHelper class provides static methods to facilitate working with a ID policy. Notably, if all that is needed is to get the ID range allocated to a given user, the getRange() method provides an easy way to do that:

IDRange range = getRange("Alice", null, null);

This will automatically get the range allocated to the user Alice in the default policy file (any file in the current directory with a name ending with -idranges.owl).

Minting new identifiers

TheIAutoIDGenerator interface represents any object that can generate new identifiers. The library provides two different implementations of it:

• SequentialIDGenerator, to generate IDs with numerical suffixes picked sequentially within a range;
• RandomizedIDGenerator, to generate IDs with numerical suffixes picked randomly within a range.

Once a generator has been identified, simply call the nextID() method to mint a new identifier.

The generators can be identified with an implementation of IExistenceChecker to ensure they only generate IDs that are not already in use.