org.springframework.binding.convert.ConversionService Maven / Gradle / Ivy
/*
* Copyright 2002-2005 the original author or authors.
*
* Licensed 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.springframework.binding.convert;
/**
* A service interface for retrieving type conversion executors. The returned
* command object is thread-safe and may be safely cached for use by client
* code.
*
* @author Keith Donald
*/
public interface ConversionService {
/**
* Return all conversion executors capable of converting source objects of
* the the specified sourceClass.
* @param sourceClass the source class to convert from
* @return the matching conversion executors
*/
public ConversionExecutor[] getConversionExecutorsFrom(Class sourceClass) throws ConversionException;
/**
* Return a conversion executor command object capable of converting source
* objects of the specified sourceClass to instances of the
* targetClass.
*
* The returned ConversionExecutor is thread-safe and may safely be cached
* for use in client code.
*
* @param sourceClass The source class to convert from
* @param targetClass The target class to convert to
* @return The executor that can execute instance conversion
* @throws ConversionException An exception occured retrieving a converter
* for the source-to-target pair.
*/
public ConversionExecutor getConversionExecutor(Class sourceClass, Class targetClass) throws ConversionException;
/**
* Return a conversion executor command object capable of converting source
* objects of the specified sourceClass to target objects of
* the type associated with the specified alias.
*
* @param sourceClass the sourceClass
* @param targetAlias the target alias, may also be the fully qualified
* target class name
* @return the conversion executor
*/
public ConversionExecutor getConversionExecutorByTargetAlias(Class sourceClass, String targetAlias)
throws ConversionException;
/**
* Return the class with the specified alias.
* @param alias the class alias
* @return the class
*/
public Class getClassByAlias(String alias) throws ConversionException;
}