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 package org.apache.commons.configuration2;
18
19 /**
20 * <p>
21 * An interface for decoding encoded values from a configuration source.
22 * </p>
23 * <p>
24 * Using this interface it is possible to store encoded or encrypted values in a configuration file. An implementing
25 * object can be assigned to a configuration object. The {@code getEncodedString()} method of the
26 * {@link ImmutableConfiguration} interface makes use of this instance to decode the value read from the configuration
27 * file before it is passed to the caller.
28 * </p>
29 * <p>
30 * By providing custom implementations of this interface an application can add support for different kinds of encoded
31 * strings in configuration files.
32 * </p>
33 *
34 * @since 2.0
35 */
36 public interface ConfigurationDecoder {
37 /**
38 * Decodes the specified string. This method is called with a string in encoded form read from a configuration file. An
39 * implementation has to be perform an appropriate decoding and return the result. This result is passed to the calling
40 * application; so it should be in a readable form.
41 *
42 * @param s the string to be decoded (not <b>null</b>)
43 * @return the decoded string
44 */
45 String decode(String s);
46 }