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
018package org.apache.commons.codec;
019
020/**
021 * <p>Provides the highest level of abstraction for Encoders.
022 * This is the sister interface of {@link Decoder}.  Every implementation of
023 * Encoder provides this common generic interface whic allows a user to pass a 
024 * generic Object to any Encoder implementation in the codec package.</p>
025 *
026 * @author Apache Software Foundation
027 * @version $Id: Encoder.java 634915 2008-03-08 09:30:25Z bayard $
028 */
029public interface Encoder {
030    
031    /**
032     * Encodes an "Object" and returns the encoded content 
033     * as an Object.  The Objects here may just be <code>byte[]</code>
034     * or <code>String</code>s depending on the implementation used.
035     *   
036     * @param pObject An object ot encode
037     * 
038     * @return An "encoded" Object
039     * 
040     * @throws EncoderException an encoder exception is
041     *  thrown if the encoder experiences a failure
042     *  condition during the encoding process.
043     */
044    Object encode(Object pObject) throws EncoderException;
045}  
046