1 /*
2 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
3 * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file
4 * distributed with this work for additional information
5 * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file
6 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
7 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
8 * with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
9 *
10 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
11 *
12 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
13 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
14 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
15 * KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the
16 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
17 * under the License.
18 *
19 */
20
21 package org.apache.directory.server.dns.util;
22
23
24 /**
25 * An interface that allows an Enum to be converted to another type, such as an
26 * integer or long. Useful in cases where the Java assigned ordinal just isn't
27 * reliable enough or is unable to represent the values we need.<p>
28 *
29 * Implementers should also implement (though there is no way of requiring it)
30 * a static method for taking the conversion the other way:
31 *
32 * <code>
33 * public static Enum convert (K value);
34 * </code>
35 *
36 * @param <K>
37 * @author <a href="mailto:dev@directory.apache.org">Apache Directory Project</a>
38 * @version $Rev$, $Date$
39 */
40 public interface EnumConverter<K>
41 {
42 /**
43 * Convert the enum to another type.
44 *
45 * @return The other type.
46 */
47 K convert();
48 }