/*
 * 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.richfaces.base64;

/**
 * <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/>
 * <p>
 * Allows a user to pass a generic Object to any Decoder implementation in the codec package.
 * </p>
 * <p/>
 * <p>
 * One of the two interfaces at the center of the codec package.
 * </p>
 *
 * @author Apache Software Foundation
 * @version $Id: Decoder.java,v 1.1.2.1 2007/01/09 18:59:14 alexsmirnov 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 java.lang.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;
}
