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