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    1   /*
    2    * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
    3    * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
    4    * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
    5    * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
    6    * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
    7    * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
    8    *
    9    *      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
    19  package org.apache.commons.beanutils;
    20
    21
    22  /***
    23   * <p>General purpose data type converter that can be registered and used
    24   * within the BeanUtils package to manage the conversion of objects from
    25   * one type to another.</p>
    26   *
    27   * <p>Converter subclasses bundled with the BeanUtils library are required
    28   * to be thread-safe, as users of the library may call conversion methods
    29   * from more than one thread simultaneously.</p>
    30   *
    31   * <p>Custom converter subclasses created by users of the library can be
    32   * non-thread-safe if the application using them is single-threaded. However
    33   * it is recommended that they be written in a thread-safe manner anyway.</p>
    34   *
    35   * @author Craig McClanahan
    36   * @author Paulo Gaspar
    37   * @version $Revision: 555824 $ $Date: 2007-07-13 01:27:15 +0100 (Fri, 13 Jul 2007) $
    38   * @since 1.3
    39   */
    40
    41  public interface Converter {
    42
    43
    44      /***
    45       * Convert the specified input object into an output object of the
    46       * specified type.
    47       *
    48       * @param type Data type to which this value should be converted
    49       * @param value The input value to be converted
    50       * @return The converted value
    51       *
    52       * @exception ConversionException if conversion cannot be performed
    53       *  successfully
    54       */
    55      public Object convert(Class type, Object value);
    56
    57
    58  }