01: /*
02: * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
03: * contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
04: * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
05: * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
06: * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
07: * the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
08: *
09: * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
10: *
11: * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
12: * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
13: * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
14: * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
15: * limitations under the License.
16: */
17:
18: package org.apache.commons.beanutils;
19:
20: /**
21: * <p>General purpose data type converter that can be registered and used
22: * within the BeanUtils package to manage the conversion of objects from
23: * one type to another.</p>
24: *
25: * <p>Converter subclasses bundled with the BeanUtils library are required
26: * to be thread-safe, as users of the library may call conversion methods
27: * from more than one thread simultaneously.</p>
28: *
29: * <p>Custom converter subclasses created by users of the library can be
30: * non-thread-safe if the application using them is single-threaded. However
31: * it is recommended that they be written in a thread-safe manner anyway.</p>
32: *
33: * @author Craig McClanahan
34: * @author Paulo Gaspar
35: * @version $Revision: 555824 $ $Date: 2007-07-13 01:27:15 +0100 (Fri, 13 Jul 2007) $
36: * @since 1.3
37: */
38:
39: public interface Converter {
40:
41: /**
42: * Convert the specified input object into an output object of the
43: * specified type.
44: *
45: * @param type Data type to which this value should be converted
46: * @param value The input value to be converted
47: * @return The converted value
48: *
49: * @exception ConversionException if conversion cannot be performed
50: * successfully
51: */
52: public Object convert(Class type, Object value);
53:
54: }
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