/*
 * 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 org.ajax4jsf.util.base64;

/**
 * <p>
 * Provides the highest level of abstraction for Encoders. This is the sister interface of {@link Decoder}. Every implementation
 * of Encoder provides this common generic interface whic allows a user to pass a generic Object to any Encoder implementation
 * in the codec package.
 * </p>
 *
 * @author Apache Software Foundation
 * @version $Id: Encoder.java,v 1.1.2.1 2007/01/09 18:59:12 alexsmirnov Exp $
 */
public interface Encoder {
    /**
     * Encodes an "Object" and returns the encoded content as an Object. The Objects here may just be <code>byte[]</code> or
     * <code>String</code>s depending on the implementation used.
     *
     * @param pObject An object ot encode
     * @return An "encoded" Object
     * @throws EncoderException an encoder exception is thrown if the encoder experiences a failure condition during the
     *         encoding process.
     */
    Object encode(Object pObject) throws EncoderException;
}
