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 package org.apache.directory.mavibot.btree.serializer;
21
22
23 import java.io.IOException;
24
25
26 /**
27 * This interface is used by implementations of serializer, deserializr and comparator.
28 *
29 * @param <T> The type for the element to serialize
30 *
31 * @author <a href="mailto:dev@directory.apache.org">Apache Directory Project</a>
32 */
33 public interface Serializer<T>
34 {
35 /**
36 * Produce the byte[] representation of the type
37 *
38 * @param type The type to serialize
39 * @return The byte[] containing the serialized type
40 */
41 byte[] serialize( T type );
42
43
44 /**
45 * Deserialize a type from a byte[]
46 *
47 * @param bufferHandler The incoming BufferHandler
48 * @return The deserialized type
49 * @throws IOException If the deserialization failed
50 */
51 T deserialize( BufferHandler bufferHandler ) throws IOException;
52
53
54 /**
55 * Returns the comparison of two types. <br/>
56 * <ul>
57 * <li>If type1 < type2, return -1</li>
58 * <li>If type1 > type2, return 1</li>
59 * <li>If type1 == type2, return 0</li>
60 * </ul>
61 *
62 * @param type1 The first type to compare
63 * @param type2 The second type to compare
64 * @return The comparison result
65 */
66 int compare( T type1, T type2 );
67 }