panda.codec.Decoder Maven / Gradle / Ivy
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;
}