panda.codec.Decoder Maven / Gradle / Ivy

Go to download

Show more of this group Show more artifacts with this name
Show all versions of panda-core Show documentation

Panda Core is the core module of Panda Framework, it contains commonly used utility classes similar to apache-commons.

There is a newer version: 1.8.0

package panda.codec;

/**
 * Provides the highest level of abstraction for Decoders.
 * 
 * This is the sister interface of {@link Encoder}. All Decoders implement this common generic
 * interface. Allows a user to pass a generic Object to any Decoder implementation in the codec
 * package.
 * 
 * One of the two interfaces at the center of the codec package.
 */
public interface Decoder {

	/**
	 * Decodes an "encoded" Object and returns a "decoded" Object. Note that the implementation of
	 * this interface will try to cast the Object parameter to the specific type expected by a
	 * particular Decoder implementation. If a {@link ClassCastException} occurs this decode method
	 * will throw a DecoderException.
	 * 
	 * @param source the object to decode
	 * @return a 'decoded" object
	 * @throws DecoderException a decoder exception can be thrown for any number of reasons. Some
	 *             good candidates are that the parameter passed to this method is null, a param
	 *             cannot be cast to the appropriate type for a specific encoder.
	 */
	Object decode(Object source) throws DecoderException;
}