1 /* 2 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more 3 * contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with 4 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. 5 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0 6 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with 7 * the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at 8 * 9 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 10 * 11 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software 12 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, 13 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. 14 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and 15 * limitations under the License. 16 */ 17 18 package org.apache.commons.codec; 19 20 /** 21 * <p>Provides the highest level of abstraction for Encoders. 22 * This is the sister interface of {@link Decoder}. Every implementation of 23 * Encoder provides this common generic interface whic allows a user to pass a 24 * generic Object to any Encoder implementation in the codec package.</p> 25 * 26 * @version $Id: Encoder.java 634915 2008-03-08 09:30:25Z bayard $ 27 */ 28 public 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
