1 /* 2 * Copyright 2001-2004 The Apache Software Foundation. 3 * 4 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); 5 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. 6 * You may obtain a copy of the License at 7 * 8 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 9 * 10 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software 11 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, 12 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. 13 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and 14 * limitations under the License. 15 */ 16 17 package org.apache.commons.codec; 18 19 /** 20 * <p>Provides the highest level of abstraction for Decoders. 21 * This is the sister interface of {@link Encoder}. All 22 * Decoders implement this common generic interface.</p> 23 * 24 * <p>Allows a user to pass a generic Object to any Decoder 25 * implementation in the codec package.</p> 26 * 27 * <p>One of the two interfaces at the center of the codec package.</p> 28 * 29 * @author Apache Software Foundation 30 * @version $Id: Decoder.java,v 1.9 2004/02/29 04:08:31 tobrien Exp $ 31 */ 32 public interface Decoder { 33 34 /** 35 * Decodes an "encoded" Object and returns a "decoded" 36 * Object. Note that the implementation of this 37 * interface will try to cast the Object parameter 38 * to the specific type expected by a particular Decoder 39 * implementation. If a {@link java.lang.ClassCastException} occurs 40 * this decode method will throw a DecoderException. 41 * 42 * @param pObject an object to "decode" 43 * 44 * @return a 'decoded" object 45 * 46 * @throws DecoderException a decoder exception can 47 * be thrown for any number of reasons. Some good 48 * candidates are that the parameter passed to this 49 * method is null, a param cannot be cast to the 50 * appropriate type for a specific encoder. 51 */ 52 Object decode(Object pObject) throws DecoderException; 53 } 54 55
