1 /* 2 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more 3 * contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with 4 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. 5 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0 6 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with 7 * the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at 8 * 9 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 10 * 11 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software 12 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, 13 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. 14 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and 15 * limitations under the License. 16 */ 17 18 19 package org.apache.commons.beanutils; 20 21 22 /** 23 * <p>General purpose data type converter that can be registered and used 24 * within the BeanUtils package to manage the conversion of objects from 25 * one type to another.</p> 26 * 27 * <p>Converter subclasses bundled with the BeanUtils library are required 28 * to be thread-safe, as users of the library may call conversion methods 29 * from more than one thread simultaneously.</p> 30 * 31 * <p>Custom converter subclasses created by users of the library can be 32 * non-thread-safe if the application using them is single-threaded. However 33 * it is recommended that they be written in a thread-safe manner anyway.</p> 34 * 35 * @version $Id$ 36 * @since 1.3 37 */ 38 39 public interface Converter { 40 41 42 /** 43 * Convert the specified input object into an output object of the 44 * specified type. 45 * 46 * @param <T> the desired result type 47 * @param type Data type to which this value should be converted 48 * @param value The input value to be converted 49 * @return The converted value 50 * 51 * @throws ConversionException if conversion cannot be performed 52 * successfully 53 */ 54 public <T> T convert(Class<T> type, Object value); 55 56 57 }