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.html 889935 2013-12-11 05:05:13Z ggregory $
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