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     * A pluggable strategy to be able to convert objects <a
021     * href="http://activemq.apache.org/camel/type-converter.html">to different
022     * types</a> such as to and from String, InputStream/OutputStream,
023     * Reader/Writer, Document, byte[], ByteBuffer etc
024     * 
025     * @version $Revision: 47144 $
026     */
027    public interface TypeConverter {
028    
029        /**
030         * Converts the value to the specified type
031         * 
032         * @param type the requested type
033         * @param value the value to be converted
034         * @return the converted value or <tt>null</tt> if it can not be converted
035         */
036        <T> T convertTo(Class<T> type, Object value);
037    
038        /**
039         * Converts the value to the specified type in the context of an exchange
040         * <p/>
041         * Used when conversion requires extra information from the current
042         * exchange (such as encoding).
043         *
044         * @param type the requested type
045         * @param exchange the current exchange
046         * @param value the value to be converted
047         * @return the converted value or <tt>null</tt> if it can not be converted
048         */
049        <T> T convertTo(Class<T> type, Exchange exchange, Object value);
050    }