1 /* 2 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one 3 * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file 4 * distributed with this work for additional information 5 * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file 6 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the 7 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance 8 * with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at 9 * 10 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 11 * 12 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, 13 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an 14 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY 15 * KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the 16 * specific language governing permissions and limitations 17 * under the License. 18 * 19 */ 20 21 package org.apache.directory.server.dns.util; 22 23 24 /** 25 * An interface that allows an Enum to be converted to another type, such as an 26 * integer or long. Useful in cases where the Java assigned ordinal just isn't 27 * reliable enough or is unable to represent the values we need.<p> 28 * 29 * Implementers should also implement (though there is no way of requiring it) 30 * a static method for taking the conversion the other way: 31 * 32 * <code> 33 * public static Enum convert (K value); 34 * </code> 35 * 36 * @param <K> 37 * @author <a href="mailto:dev@directory.apache.org">Apache Directory Project</a> 38 * @version $Rev$, $Date$ 39 */ 40 public interface EnumConverter<K> 41 { 42 /** 43 * Convert the enum to another type. 44 * 45 * @return The other type. 46 */ 47 K convert(); 48 }