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
018package org.apache.commons.beanutils2;
019
020/**
021 * <p>
022 * General purpose data type converter that can be registered and used within the BeanUtils package to manage the conversion of objects from one type to
023 * another.
024 * </p>
025 *
026 * <p>
027 * Converter subclasses bundled with the BeanUtils library are required to be thread-safe, as users of the library may call conversion methods from more than
028 * one thread simultaneously.
029 * </p>
030 *
031 * <p>
032 * Custom converter subclasses created by users of the library can be non-thread-safe if the application using them is single-threaded. However it is
033 * recommended that they be written in a thread-safe manner anyway.
034 * </p>
035 *
036 * @param <T> the convert type.
037 * @since 1.3
038 */
039@FunctionalInterface
040public interface Converter<T> {
041
042    /**
043     * Convert the specified input object into an output object of the specified type.
044     *
045     * @param <R>   the result type.
046     * @param type  Data type to which this value should be converted
047     * @param value The input value to be converted
048     * @return The converted value
049     * @throws ConversionException if conversion cannot be performed successfully
050     */
051    <R> R convert(Class<R> type, Object value);
052
053}