Decoder


1   /*
2    * Copyright 2001-2004 The Apache Software Foundation.
3    * 
4    * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
5    * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
6    * You may obtain a copy of the License at
7    * 
8    *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
9    * 
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 Decoders.
21   * This is the sister interface of {@link Encoder}.  All
22   * Decoders implement this common generic interface.</p>
23   * 
24   * <p>Allows a user to pass a generic Object to any Decoder 
25   * implementation in the codec package.</p>
26   * 
27   * <p>One of the two interfaces at the center of the codec package.</p>
28   * 
29   * @author Apache Software Foundation
30   * @version $Id: Decoder.java,v 1.9 2004/02/29 04:08:31 tobrien Exp $
31   */
32  public interface Decoder {
33  
34      /**
35       * Decodes an "encoded" Object and returns a "decoded"
36       * Object.  Note that the implementation of this
37       * interface will try to cast the Object parameter
38       * to the specific type expected by a particular Decoder
39       * implementation.  If a {@link java.lang.ClassCastException} occurs
40       * this decode method will throw a DecoderException.
41       * 
42       * @param pObject an object to "decode"
43       * 
44       * @return a 'decoded" object
45       * 
46       * @throws DecoderException a decoder exception can
47       * be thrown for any number of reasons.  Some good
48       * candidates are that the parameter passed to this
49       * method is null, a param cannot be cast to the
50       * appropriate type for a specific encoder.
51       */
52      Object   decode(Object   pObject) throws DecoderException;
53  }  
54  
55
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