001package org.apache.commons.jcs.engine.behavior;
002
003/*
004 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
005 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
006 * distributed with this work for additional information
007 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
008 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
009 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
010 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
011 *
012 *   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
013 *
014 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
015 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
016 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
017 * KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
018 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
019 * under the License.
020 */
021
022import java.io.IOException;
023
024/**
025 * Defines the behavior for cache element serializers. This layer of abstraction allows us to plug
026 * in different serialization mechanisms, such as a compressing standard serializer.
027 * <p>
028 * @author Aaron Smuts
029 */
030public interface IElementSerializer
031{
032    /**
033     * Turns an object into a byte array.
034     * @param obj
035     * @return byte[]
036     * @throws IOException
037     */
038    <T> byte[] serialize( T obj )
039        throws IOException;
040
041    /**
042     * Turns a byte array into an object.
043     * @param bytes
044     * @return Object
045     * @throws IOException
046     * @throws ClassNotFoundException thrown if we don't know the object.
047     */
048    <T> T deSerialize( byte[] bytes, ClassLoader loader )
049        throws IOException, ClassNotFoundException;
050}