/*
* 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 Encoders. This is the sister interface of {@link Decoder}. Every implementation
* of Encoder provides this common generic interface whic allows a user to pass a generic Object to any Encoder implementation
* in the codec package.
* </p>
*
* @author Apache Software Foundation
* @version $Id: Encoder.java,v 1.1.2.1 2007/01/09 18:59:12 alexsmirnov Exp $
*/
public interface Encoder {
/**
* Encodes an "Object" and returns the encoded content as an Object. The Objects here may just be <code>byte[]</code> or
* <code>String</code>s depending on the implementation used.
*
* @param pObject An object ot encode
* @return An "encoded" Object
* @throws EncoderException an encoder exception is thrown if the encoder experiences a failure condition during the
* encoding process.
*/
Object encode(Object pObject) throws EncoderException;
}