1 /*
2 * Copyright 2001-2004 The Apache Software Foundation.
3 *
4 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
5 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
6 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
7 *
8 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
9 *
10 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
11 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
12 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
13 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
14 * limitations under the License.
15 */
16
17 package org.apache.asn1.codec;
18
19 /**
20 * <p>Provides the highest level of abstraction for Encoders.
21 * This is the sister interface of {@link org.apache.asn1.codec.Decoder}. Every implementation of
22 * Encoder provides this common generic interface whic allows a user to pass a
23 * generic Object to any Encoder implementation in the codec package.</p>
24 *
25 * @author Apache Software Foundation
26 * @version $Id: Encoder.java,v 1.10 2004/02/29 04:08:31 tobrien Exp $
27 */
28 public interface Encoder {
29
30 /**
31 * Encodes an "Object" and returns the encoded content
32 * as an Object. The Objects here may just be <code>byte[]</code>
33 * or <code>String</code>s depending on the implementation used.
34 *
35 * @param pObject An object ot encode
36 *
37 * @return An "encoded" Object
38 *
39 * @throws EncoderException an encoder exception is
40 * thrown if the encoder experiences a failure
41 * condition during the encoding process.
42 */
43 Object encode(Object pObject) throws EncoderException;
44 }
45