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1   /*
2    * Copyright 2001-2004 The Apache Software Foundation.
3    * 
4    * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
5    * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
6    * You may obtain a copy of the License at
7    * 
8    *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
9    * 
10   * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
11   * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
12   * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
13   * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
14   * limitations under the License.
15   */ 
16  
17  package org.apache.asn1.codec;
18  
19  /***
20   * <p>Provides the highest level of abstraction for Encoders.
21   * This is the sister interface of {@link org.apache.asn1.codec.Decoder}.  Every implementation of
22   * Encoder provides this common generic interface whic allows a user to pass a 
23   * generic Object to any Encoder implementation in the codec package.</p>
24   *
25   * @author Apache Software Foundation
26   * @version $Id: Encoder.java,v 1.10 2004/02/29 04:08:31 tobrien Exp $
27   */
28  public interface Encoder {
29      
30      /***
31       * Encodes an "Object" and returns the encoded content 
32       * as an Object.  The Objects here may just be <code>byte[]</code>
33       * or <code>String</code>s depending on the implementation used.
34       *   
35       * @param pObject An object ot encode
36       * 
37       * @return An "encoded" Object
38       * 
39       * @throws EncoderException an encoder exception is
40       *  thrown if the encoder experiences a failure
41       *  condition during the encoding process.
42       */
43      Object encode(Object pObject) throws EncoderException;
44  }  
45