/*
* 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.isis.applib.adapters;
/**
* Provides a mechanism for encoding/decoding objects.
*
* <p>
* This interface is used in two complementary ways:
* <ul>
* <li>As one option, it allows objects to take control of their own
* encoding/decoding, by implementing directly. However, the instance is used as
* a factory for itself. The framework will instantiate an instance, invoke the
* appropriate method method, and use the returned object. The instantiated
* instance itself will be discarded.</li>
* <li>Alternatively, an implementor of this interface can be nominated in the
* {@link org.apache.isis.applib.annotation.Encodable} annotation, allowing a
* class that needs to be encodeable to indicate how it can be encoded/decoded.</li>
*
* <p>
* Whatever the class that implements this interface, it must also expose either
* a <tt>public</tt> no-arg constructor, or (for implementations that also are
* <tt>Facet</tt>s) a <tt>public</tt> constructor that accepts a single
* <tt>FacetHolder</tt>. This constructor allows the framework to instantiate
* the object reflectively.
*
* @see Parser
* @see DefaultsProvider
* @see ValueSemanticsProvider
*/
public interface EncoderDecoder<T> {
/**
* Returns the provided object as an encoded string.
*
* <p>
* Even if the class is self-encodeable, note that this method is always
* called on a new instance of the object created via the no-arg
* constructor. That is, the object shouldn't encode itself, it should
* encode the object provided to it.
*/
String toEncodedString(T toEncode);
/**
* Converts an encoded string to an instance of the object.
*
* <p>
* Note that here the implementing class is acting as a factory for itself.
*
* @see #toEncodedString(% toEncode)
*/
T fromEncodedString(String encodedString);
}