001/*
002 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
003 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
004 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
005 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
006 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
007 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
008 *
009 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
010 *
011 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
012 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
013 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
014 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
015 * limitations under the License.
016 */
017
018
019package org.apache.commons.beanutils;
020
021
022/**
023 * <p>General purpose data type converter that can be registered and used
024 * within the BeanUtils package to manage the conversion of objects from
025 * one type to another.</p>
026 *
027 * <p>Converter subclasses bundled with the BeanUtils library are required
028 * to be thread-safe, as users of the library may call conversion methods
029 * from more than one thread simultaneously.</p>
030 *
031 * <p>Custom converter subclasses created by users of the library can be
032 * non-thread-safe if the application using them is single-threaded. However
033 * it is recommended that they be written in a thread-safe manner anyway.</p> 
034 *
035 * @author Craig McClanahan
036 * @author Paulo Gaspar
037 * @version $Revision: 555824 $ $Date: 2007-07-13 01:27:15 +0100 (Fri, 13 Jul 2007) $
038 * @since 1.3
039 */
040
041public interface Converter {
042
043
044    /**
045     * Convert the specified input object into an output object of the
046     * specified type.
047     *
048     * @param type Data type to which this value should be converted
049     * @param value The input value to be converted
050     * @return The converted value
051     *
052     * @exception ConversionException if conversion cannot be performed
053     *  successfully
054     */
055    public Object convert(Class type, Object value);
056
057
058}