    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}