Encoder.java revision 069490a5ca2fd1988d29daf45d892f47ad665115 
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 Encoders.
21 * This is the sister interface of {@link Decoder}.  Every implementation of
22 * Encoder provides this common generic interface whic allows a user to pass a
23 * generic Object to any Encoder implementation in the codec package.</p>
24 *
25 * @author Apache Software Foundation
26 * @version $Id: Encoder.java,v 1.10 2004/02/29 04:08:31 tobrien Exp $
27 */
28public interface Encoder {
29
30    /**
31     * Encodes an "Object" and returns the encoded content
32     * as an Object.  The Objects here may just be <code>byte[]</code>
33     * or <code>String</code>s depending on the implementation used.
34     *
35     * @param pObject An object ot encode
36     *
37     * @return An "encoded" Object
38     *
39     * @throws EncoderException an encoder exception is
40     *  thrown if the encoder experiences a failure
41     *  condition during the encoding process.
42     */
43    Object encode(Object pObject) throws EncoderException;
44}
45
46