    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 Encoders.
    022     * <p>
    023     * This is the sister interface of {@link Decoder}.  Every implementation of Encoder provides this
    024     * common generic interface which allows a user to pass a generic Object to any Encoder implementation
    025     * in the codec package.
    026     *
    027     * @version $Id: Encoder.java 1379145 2012-08-30 21:02:52Z tn $
    028     */
    029    public interface Encoder {
    030
    031        /**
    032         * Encodes an "Object" and returns the encoded content as an Object. The Objects here may just be
    033         * <code>byte[]</code> or <code>String</code>s depending on the implementation used.
    034         *
    035         * @param source
    036         *            An object to encode
    037         * @return An "encoded" Object
    038         * @throws EncoderException
    039         *             An encoder exception is thrown if the encoder experiences a failure condition during the encoding
    040         *             process.
    041         */
    042        Object encode(Object source) throws EncoderException;
    043    }
    044