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 * @version $Id$
36 * @since 1.3
37 */
38
39 public interface Converter {
40
41
42 /**
43 * Convert the specified input object into an output object of the
44 * specified type.
45 *
46 * @param <T> the desired result type
47 * @param type Data type to which this value should be converted
48 * @param value The input value to be converted
49 * @return The converted value
50 *
51 * @throws ConversionException if conversion cannot be performed
52 * successfully
53 */
54 public <T> T convert(Class<T> type, Object value);
55
56
57 }