001/*
002 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
003 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
004 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
005 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
006 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
007 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
008 *
009 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
010 *
011 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
012 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
013 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
014 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
015 * limitations under the License.
016 */
017
018package org.apache.commons.beanutils;
019
020/**
021 * <p>General purpose data type converter that can be registered and used
022 * within the BeanUtils package to manage the conversion of objects from
023 * one type to another.</p>
024 *
025 * <p>Converter subclasses bundled with the BeanUtils library are required
026 * to be thread-safe, as users of the library may call conversion methods
027 * from more than one thread simultaneously.</p>
028 *
029 * <p>Custom converter subclasses created by users of the library can be
030 * non-thread-safe if the application using them is single-threaded. However
031 * it is recommended that they be written in a thread-safe manner anyway.</p>
032 *
033 * @since 1.3
034 */
035
036public interface Converter {
037
038    /**
039     * Convert the specified input object into an output object of the
040     * specified type.
041     *
042     * @param <T> the desired result type
043     * @param type Data type to which this value should be converted
044     * @param value The input value to be converted
045     * @return The converted value
046     * @throws ConversionException if conversion cannot be performed
047     *  successfully
048     */
049    <T> T convert(Class<T> type, Object value);
050
051}