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 */
017package org.apache.commons.jxpath.util;
018
019/**
020 * A type converter can be installed on {@link TypeUtils} to introduce
021 * additional type conversions for JXPath. Most of
022 * the time {@link BasicTypeConverter} should be used as the superclass.
023 *
024 * @see TypeUtils#setTypeConverter
025 *
026 * @author Dmitri Plotnikov
027 * @version $Revision: 652845 $ $Date: 2008-05-02 19:46:46 +0200 (Fr, 02 Mai 2008) $
028 */
029public interface TypeConverter {
030
031    /**
032     * Returns true if it can convert the supplied
033     * object to the specified class.
034     * @param object object to test
035     * @param toType target class
036     * @return boolean
037     */
038    boolean canConvert(Object object, Class toType);
039
040    /**
041     * Converts the supplied object to the specified
042     * type. Throws a runtime exception if the conversion is
043     * not possible.
044     * @param object object to convert
045     * @param toType target class
046     * @return resulting Object
047     */
048    Object convert(Object object, Class toType);
049}