| /* |
| * 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.directory.api.asn1; |
| |
| |
| /** |
| * <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> |
| * Allows a user to pass a generic Object to any Decoder implementation in the |
| * codec package. |
| * </p> |
| * <p> |
| * One of the two interfaces at the center of the codec package. |
| * </p> |
| * |
| * @author <a href="mailto:dev@directory.apache.org">Apache Directory Project</a> |
| */ |
| 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 object 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 object ) throws DecoderException; |
| } |