Associator (Java API Reference for Oracle® Coherence Community Edition)

All Known Implementing Classes:

DefaultKeyAssociator, NaturalAssociator
```
public interface Associator
```
The Associator interface facilitates the creation of a very generic equivalence relation between different objects and allows to group them based on the equality of the "association key" object returned by the getAssociatedKey(java.lang.Object) method.

Author:

gg 2012.03.11

See Also:

Associated

Method Summary

All Methods Instance Methods Abstract Methods
Modifier and Type	Method	Description
`Object`	`getAssociatedKey(Object o)`	Determine the host key (or base) object to which the specified object is associated.

- Method Detail
  - getAssociatedKey
```
Object getAssociatedKey(Object o)
```
    Determine the host key (or base) object to which the specified object is associated.
    Note: It's expected that the returned object is suitable to be used as an immutable identity (e.g. a key in a Map).
    Note 2: Circular associations are not permitted.
    
    Parameters:
    
    o - the object to obtain an association for
    
    Returns:
    
    the host key that for this object, or null if this object has no association