org.apache.commons.codec.Encoder Maven / Gradle / Ivy
/*
* Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
* contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
* this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
* The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
* (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
* the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
*
* http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
*
* Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
* distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
* WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
* See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
* limitations under the License.
*/
package org.apache.commons.codec;
/**
* Provides the highest level of abstraction for Encoders.
*
* This is the sister interface of {@link Decoder}. Every implementation of Encoder provides this
* common generic interface which allows a user to pass a generic Object to any Encoder implementation
* in the codec package.
*
* @version $Id: Encoder.java 1379145 2012-08-30 21:02:52Z tn $
*/
public interface Encoder {
/**
* Encodes an "Object" and returns the encoded content as an Object. The Objects here may just be
* byte[] or Strings depending on the implementation used.
*
* @param source
* An object to encode
* @return An "encoded" Object
* @throws EncoderException
* An encoder exception is thrown if the encoder experiences a failure condition during the encoding
* process.
*/
Object encode(Object source) throws EncoderException;
}