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 */
020package org.apache.directory.api.asn1;
021
022
023import java.nio.ByteBuffer;
024
025
026/**
027 * An abstract class which implements basic TLV operations.
028 * 
029 * @author <a href="mailto:dev@directory.apache.org">Apache Directory Project</a>
030 */
031public interface Asn1Object
032{
033    /**
034     * Compute the object length, which is the sum of all inner length.
035     * 
036     * @return The object's computed length
037     */
038    int computeLength();
039
040
041    /**
042     * Encode the object to a PDU.
043     * 
044     * @param buffer The buffer where to put the PDU
045     * @return The encoded PDU.
046     * @throws EncoderException if the buffer can't be encoded
047     */
048    ByteBuffer encode( ByteBuffer buffer ) throws EncoderException;
049}