/* This file is part of the db4o object database http://www.db4o.com
Copyright (C) 2004 - 2011 Versant Corporation http://www.versant.com
db4o is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of version 3 of the GNU General Public License as published
by the Free Software Foundation.
db4o is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License
for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/. */
package com.db4o.config.encoding;
/**
* encodes a String to a byte array and decodes a String
* from a part of a byte array
*/
public interface StringEncoding {
/**
* called when a string is to be encoded to a byte array.
* @param str the string to encode
* @return the encoded byte array
*/
public byte[] encode(String str);
/**
* called when a byte array is to be decoded to a string.
* @param bytes the byte array
* @param start the start offset in the byte array
* @param length the length of the encoded string in the byte array
* @return the string
*/
public String decode(byte[] bytes, int start, int length);
}