codec/src/main/java/org/apache/mina/codec/ProtocolEncoder.java

/*
 *  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.mina.codec;

import java.nio.ByteBuffer;

/**
 * In charge of encoding a message of type MESSAGE into another form (could be a {@link ByteBuffer} or any other
 * protocol level construction.
 * 
 * @author <a href="http://mina.apache.org">Apache MINA Project</a>
 * 
 */
public interface ProtocolEncoder<INPUT /* message type */, OUTPUT> {

    /**
     * Encodes higher-level message objects of type <code>INPUT</code> into binary or protocol-specific data of type
     * <code>OUTPUT</code>.
     */
    OUTPUT encode(INPUT message);

}