001    /*
002     * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
003     * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
004     * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
005     * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
006     * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
007     * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
008     * 
009     *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
010     * 
011     * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
012     * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
013     * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
014     * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
015     * limitations under the License.
016     */
017    
018    package org.apache.commons.codec;
019    
020    /**
021     * <p>Provides the highest level of abstraction for Encoders.
022     * This is the sister interface of {@link Decoder}.  Every implementation of
023     * Encoder provides this common generic interface whic allows a user to pass a 
024     * generic Object to any Encoder implementation in the codec package.</p>
025     *
026     * @author Apache Software Foundation
027     * @version $Id: Encoder.java 634915 2008-03-08 09:30:25Z bayard $
028     */
029    public interface Encoder {
030        
031        /**
032         * Encodes an "Object" and returns the encoded content 
033         * as an Object.  The Objects here may just be <code>byte[]</code>
034         * or <code>String</code>s depending on the implementation used.
035         *   
036         * @param pObject An object ot encode
037         * 
038         * @return An "encoded" Object
039         * 
040         * @throws EncoderException an encoder exception is
041         *  thrown if the encoder experiences a failure
042         *  condition during the encoding process.
043         */
044        Object encode(Object pObject) throws EncoderException;
045    }  
046