/* Copyright 2005-2006 Tim Fennell
*
* 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 net.sourceforge.stripes.validation;
import java.util.Collection;
import java.util.Locale;
/**
* Interface for all type converters in the validation system that provide facilities for
* converting from String to a specific object type.
*
* @author Tim Fennell
*/
public interface TypeConverter<T> {
/**
* Sets the locale that the TypeConverter can expect incoming Strings to be in. This method will
* only be called once during a TypeConverter's lifetime, and will be called prior to any
* invocations of convert().
*
* @param locale the locale that the TypeConverter will be converting from.
*/
void setLocale(Locale locale);
/**
* Convert a String to the target type supported by this converter.
*
* @param input the String being converted
* @param targetType the Class representing the type of the property to which the return
* value of the conversion will be assigned. In many cases this can be ignored as
* converters will return a single type more often than not.
* @param errors an empty collection of validation errors that should be populated by the
* converter for any errors that occur during validation that are user input related.
* @return T an instance of the converted type, or null if the input cannot be converted
*/
T convert(String input, Class<? extends T> targetType, Collection<ValidationError> errors);
}