Decoder.java revision 417f3b92ba4549b2f22340e3107d869d2b9c5bb8 
1/*
2 * Copyright 2001-2004 The Apache Software Foundation.
3 *
4 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
5 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
6 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
7 *
8 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
9 *
10 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
11 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
12 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
13 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
14 * limitations under the License.
15 */
16
17package org.apache.commons.codec;
18
19/**
20 * <p>Provides the highest level of abstraction for Decoders.
21 * This is the sister interface of {@link Encoder}.  All
22 * Decoders implement this common generic interface.</p>
23 *
24 * <p>Allows a user to pass a generic Object to any Decoder
25 * implementation in the codec package.</p>
26 *
27 * <p>One of the two interfaces at the center of the codec package.</p>
28 *
29 * @author Apache Software Foundation
30 * @version $Id: Decoder.java,v 1.9 2004/02/29 04:08:31 tobrien Exp $
31 */
32public interface Decoder {
33
34    /**
35     * Decodes an "encoded" Object and returns a "decoded"
36     * Object.  Note that the implementation of this
37     * interface will try to cast the Object parameter
38     * to the specific type expected by a particular Decoder
39     * implementation.  If a {@link java.lang.ClassCastException} occurs
40     * this decode method will throw a DecoderException.
41     *
42     * @param pObject an object to "decode"
43     *
44     * @return a 'decoded" object
45     *
46     * @throws DecoderException a decoder exception can
47     * be thrown for any number of reasons.  Some good
48     * candidates are that the parameter passed to this
49     * method is null, a param cannot be cast to the
50     * appropriate type for a specific encoder.
51     */
52    Object decode(Object pObject) throws DecoderException;
53}
54
55