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
18
19 package org.apache.commons.beanutils;
20
21
22 /**
23 * <p>General purpose data type converter that can be registered and used
24 * within the BeanUtils package to manage the conversion of objects from
25 * one type to another.</p>
26 *
27 * <p>Converter subclasses bundled with the BeanUtils library are required
28 * to be thread-safe, as users of the library may call conversion methods
29 * from more than one thread simultaneously.</p>
30 *
31 * <p>Custom converter subclasses created by users of the library can be
32 * non-thread-safe if the application using them is single-threaded. However
33 * it is recommended that they be written in a thread-safe manner anyway.</p>
34 *
35 * @author Craig McClanahan
36 * @author Paulo Gaspar
37 * @version $Revision: 555824 $ $Date: 2007-07-12 20:27:15 -0400 (Thu, 12 Jul 2007) $
38 * @since 1.3
39 */
40
41 public interface Converter {
42
43
44 /**
45 * Convert the specified input object into an output object of the
46 * specified type.
47 *
48 * @param type Data type to which this value should be converted
49 * @param value The input value to be converted
50 * @return The converted value
51 *
52 * @exception ConversionException if conversion cannot be performed
53 * successfully
54 */
55 public Object convert(Class type, Object value);
56
57
58 }