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
021package org.apache.directory.api.asn1;
022
023
024/**
025 * <p>
026 * Provides the highest level of abstraction for Encoders. This is the sister
027 * interface of {@link 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 */
035public interface Encoder
036{
037    /**
038     * Encodes an "Object" and returns the encoded content as an Object. The
039     * Objects here may just be <code>byte[]</code> or <code>String</code>s
040     * depending on the implementation used.
041     * 
042     * @param object An object to encode
043     * @return An "encoded" Object
044     * @throws EncoderException an encoder exception is thrown if the encoder experiences a
045     * failure condition during the encoding process.
046     */
047    Object encode( Object object ) throws EncoderException;
048}