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 Encoders. 21 * This is the sister interface of {@link Decoder}. Every implementation of 22 * Encoder provides this common generic interface whic allows a user to pass a 23 * generic Object to any Encoder implementation in the codec package.</p> 24 * 25 * @author Apache Software Foundation 26 * @version $Id: Encoder.java,v 1.10 2004/02/29 04:08:31 tobrien Exp $ 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
