    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     * Provides the highest level of abstraction for Decoders.
    022     * <p>
    023     * This is the sister interface of {@link Encoder}. All Decoders implement this common generic interface.
    024     * Allows a user to pass a generic Object to any Decoder implementation in the codec package.
    025     * <p>
    026     * One of the two interfaces at the center of the codec package.
    027     *
    028     * @version $Id: Decoder.java 1379145 2012-08-30 21:02:52Z tn $
    029     */
    030    public interface Decoder {
    031
    032        /**
    033         * Decodes an "encoded" Object and returns a "decoded" Object. Note that the implementation of this interface will
    034         * try to cast the Object parameter to the specific type expected by a particular Decoder implementation. If a
    035         * {@link ClassCastException} occurs this decode method will throw a DecoderException.
    036         *
    037         * @param source
    038         *            the object to decode
    039         * @return a 'decoded" object
    040         * @throws DecoderException
    041         *             a decoder exception can be thrown for any number of reasons. Some good candidates are that the
    042         *             parameter passed to this method is null, a param cannot be cast to the appropriate type for a
    043         *             specific encoder.
    044         */
    045        Object decode(Object source) throws DecoderException;
    046    }
    047