/*
* Copyright 2001-2004 The Apache Software Foundation.
*
* Licensed 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.ajax4jsf.util.base64;
/**
* <p>
* Provides the highest level of abstraction for Decoders. This is the sister interface of {@link Encoder}. All Decoders
* implement this common generic interface.
* </p>
* <p/>
* <p>
* Allows a user to pass a generic Object to any Decoder implementation in the codec package.
* </p>
* <p/>
* <p>
* One of the two interfaces at the center of the codec package.
* </p>
*
* @author Apache Software Foundation
* @version $Id: Decoder.java,v 1.1.2.1 2007/01/09 18:59:14 alexsmirnov Exp $
*/
public interface Decoder {
/**
* Decodes an "encoded" Object and returns a "decoded" Object. Note that the implementation of this interface will try to
* cast the Object parameter to the specific type expected by a particular Decoder implementation. If a
* {@link java.lang.ClassCastException} occurs this decode method will throw a DecoderException.
*
* @param pObject an object to "decode"
* @return a 'decoded" object
* @throws DecoderException a decoder exception can be thrown for any number of reasons. Some good candidates are that the
* parameter passed to this method is null, a param cannot be cast to the appropriate type for a specific encoder.
*/
Object decode(Object pObject) throws DecoderException;
}