/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 * The ASF licenses this file to You 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 org.apache.commons.beanutils;


General purpose data type converter that can be registered and used
within the BeanUtils package to manage the conversion of objects from
one type to another.
Converter subclasses bundled with the BeanUtils library are required
to be thread-safe, as users of the library may call conversion methods
from more than one thread simultaneously.
Custom converter subclasses created by users of the library can be
non-thread-safe if the application using them is single-threaded. However
it is recommended that they be written in a thread-safe manner anyway.
Version:
$Id$
Since:
1.3/**
 * <p>General purpose data type converter that can be registered and used
 * within the BeanUtils package to manage the conversion of objects from
 * one type to another.</p>
 *
 * <p>Converter subclasses bundled with the BeanUtils library are required
 * to be thread-safe, as users of the library may call conversion methods
 * from more than one thread simultaneously.</p>
 *
 * <p>Custom converter subclasses created by users of the library can be
 * non-thread-safe if the application using them is single-threaded. However
 * it is recommended that they be written in a thread-safe manner anyway.</p>
 *
 * @version $Id$
 * @since 1.3
 */

public interface Converter {


    
Convert the specified input object into an output object of the
specified type.
Params:
type – Data type to which this value should be converted
value – The input value to be converted
Type parameters:
<T> – the desired result type
Throws:
ConversionException – if conversion cannot be performed
 successfully
Returns:
The converted value/**
     * Convert the specified input object into an output object of the
     * specified type.
     *
     * @param <T> the desired result type
     * @param type Data type to which this value should be converted
     * @param value The input value to be converted
     * @return The converted value
     *
     * @throws ConversionException if conversion cannot be performed
     *  successfully
     */
    public <T> T convert(Class<T> type, Object value);


}