001    /*
002     *  Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
003     *  or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
004     *  distributed with this work for additional information
005     *  regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
006     *  to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
007     *  "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
008     *  with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
009     *  
010     *    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
011     *  
012     *  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
013     *  software distributed under the License is distributed on an
014     *  "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
015     *  KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
016     *  specific language governing permissions and limitations
017     *  under the License. 
018     *  
019     */
020    
021    package org.apache.directory.shared.asn1.codec;
022    
023    
024    /**
025     * <p>
026     * Provides the highest level of abstraction for Encoders. This is the sister
027     * interface of {@link org.apache.directory.shared.asn1.codec.Decoder}. Every
028     * implementation of Encoder provides this common generic interface whic allows
029     * a user to pass a generic Object to any Encoder implementation in the codec
030     * package.
031     * </p>
032     * 
033     * @author <a href="mailto:dev@directory.apache.org">Apache Directory Project</a>
034     * @version $Id: Encoder.java 437004 2006-08-25 22:53:17Z elecharny $
035     */
036    public interface Encoder
037    {
038    
039        /**
040         * Encodes an "Object" and returns the encoded content as an Object. The
041         * Objects here may just be <code>byte[]</code> or <code>String</code>s
042         * depending on the implementation used.
043         * 
044         * @param pObject
045         *            An object ot encode
046         * @return An "encoded" Object
047         * @throws EncoderException
048         *             an encoder exception is thrown if the encoder experiences a
049         *             failure condition during the encoding process.
050         */
051        Object encode( Object pObject ) throws EncoderException;
052    }