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 019package org.apache.commons.beanutils; 020 021 022/** 023 * <p>General purpose data type converter that can be registered and used 024 * within the BeanUtils package to manage the conversion of objects from 025 * one type to another.</p> 026 * 027 * <p>Converter subclasses bundled with the BeanUtils library are required 028 * to be thread-safe, as users of the library may call conversion methods 029 * from more than one thread simultaneously.</p> 030 * 031 * <p>Custom converter subclasses created by users of the library can be 032 * non-thread-safe if the application using them is single-threaded. However 033 * it is recommended that they be written in a thread-safe manner anyway.</p> 034 * 035 * @version $Id$ 036 * @since 1.3 037 */ 038 039public interface Converter { 040 041 042 /** 043 * Convert the specified input object into an output object of the 044 * specified type. 045 * 046 * @param <T> the desired result type 047 * @param type Data type to which this value should be converted 048 * @param value The input value to be converted 049 * @return The converted value 050 * 051 * @throws ConversionException if conversion cannot be performed 052 * successfully 053 */ 054 public <T> T convert(Class<T> type, Object value); 055 056 057}