    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
    018
    019package org.apache.commons.beanutils;
    020
    021
    022/**
    023 * <p>General purpose data type converter that can be registered and used
    024 * within the BeanUtils package to manage the conversion of objects from
    025 * one type to another.</p>
    026 *
    027 * <p>Converter subclasses bundled with the BeanUtils library are required
    028 * to be thread-safe, as users of the library may call conversion methods
    029 * from more than one thread simultaneously.</p>
    030 *
    031 * <p>Custom converter subclasses created by users of the library can be
    032 * non-thread-safe if the application using them is single-threaded. However
    033 * it is recommended that they be written in a thread-safe manner anyway.</p>
    034 *
    035 * @version $Id$
    036 * @since 1.3
    037 */
    038
    039public interface Converter {
    040
    041
    042    /**
    043     * Convert the specified input object into an output object of the
    044     * specified type.
    045     *
    046     * @param <T> the desired result type
    047     * @param type Data type to which this value should be converted
    048     * @param value The input value to be converted
    049     * @return The converted value
    050     *
    051     * @throws ConversionException if conversion cannot be performed
    052     *  successfully
    053     */
    054    public <T> T convert(Class<T> type, Object value);
    055
    056
    057}