/*
* Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
* contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
* this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
* The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
* (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
* the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
*
* http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
*
* Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
* distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
* WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
* See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
* limitations under the License.
*/
package org.apache.flink.streaming.util.serialization;
import java.io.Serializable;
import org.apache.flink.annotation.Public;
/**
* The serialization schema describes how to turn a data object into a different serialized
* representation. Most data sinks (for example Apache Kafka) require the data to be handed
* to them in a specific format (for example as byte strings).
*
* @param <T> The type to be serialized.
*/
@Public
public interface SerializationSchema<T> extends Serializable {
/**
* Serializes the incoming element to a specified type.
*
* @param element
* The incoming element to be serialized
* @return The serialized element.
*/
byte[] serialize(T element);
}