01: /*
02: * Copyright 2001-2004 The Apache Software Foundation.
03: *
04: * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
05: * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
06: * You may obtain a copy of the License at
07: *
08: * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
09: *
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: }
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