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     *      http://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    package org.apache.camel;
018    
019    
020    /**
021     * A pluggable strategy to be able to convert objects <a
022     * href="http://activemq.apache.org/camel/type-converter.html">to different
023     * types</a> such as to and from String, InputStream/OutputStream,
024     * Reader/Writer, Document, byte[], ByteBuffer etc
025     * 
026     * @version $Revision: 1299 $
027     */
028    public interface TypeConverter {
029    
030        /**
031         * Converts the value to the specified type
032         * 
033         * @param type the requested type
034         * @param value the value to be converted
035         * @return the converted value
036         * @throws {@link NoTypeConversionAvailableException} if conversion not possible
037         */
038        <T> T convertTo(Class<T> type, Object value);
039    
040        /**
041         * Converts the value to the specified type in the context of an exchange
042         * <p/>
043         * Used when conversion requires extra information from the current
044         * exchange (such as encoding).
045         *
046         * @param type the requested type
047         * @param exchange the current exchange
048         * @param value the value to be converted
049         * @return the converted value
050         * @throws {@link NoTypeConversionAvailableException} if conversion not possible
051         */
052        <T> T convertTo(Class<T> type, Exchange exchange, Object value);
053    }