content: /*
   * Copyright 2001-2004 The Apache Software Foundation.
   *
   * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
   * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
   * You may obtain a copy of the License at
   *
   *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
   *
   * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
   * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
   * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
   * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
   * limitations under the License.
   */
  
  package com.alipay.api.internal.util.codec;
  
  /**
   * <p>Provides the highest level of abstraction for Decoders.
   * This is the sister interface of {@link Encoder}.  All Decoders implement this common generic interface.</p>
   *
   * <p>Allows a user to pass a generic Object to any Decoder
   * implementation in the codec package.</p>
   *
   * <p>One of the two interfaces at the center of the codec package.</p>
   *
   * @author Apache Software Foundation
   * @version $Id: Decoder.java,v 1.9 2004/02/29 04:08:31 tobrien Exp $
   */
  public interface Decoder {
  
      /**
       * Decodes an "encoded" Object and returns a "decoded" Object.  Note that the implementation of this interface will try to cast the
       * Object parameter to the specific type expected by a particular Decoder implementation.  If a {@link ClassCastException} occurs this
       * decode method will throw a DecoderException.
       *
       * @param pObject an object to "decode"
       * @return a 'decoded" object
       * @throws DecoderException a decoder exception can be thrown for any number of reasons.  Some good candidates are that the parameter
       *                          passed to this method is null, a param cannot be cast to the appropriate type for a specific encoder.
       */
      Object decode(Object pObject) throws DecoderException;
  }  
  
  