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 * https://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}