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://camel.apache.org/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: 755958 $
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, or <tt>null</tt> if not possible to convert
036 */
037 <T> T convertTo(Class<T> type, Object value);
038
039 /**
040 * Converts the value to the specified type in the context of an exchange
041 * <p/>
042 * Used when conversion requires extra information from the current
043 * exchange (such as encoding).
044 *
045 * @param type the requested type
046 * @param exchange the current exchange
047 * @param value the value to be converted
048 * @return the converted value, or <tt>null</tt> if not possible to convert
049 */
050 <T> T convertTo(Class<T> type, Exchange exchange, Object value);
051
052 /**
053 * Converts the value to the specified type
054 *
055 * @param type the requested type
056 * @param value the value to be converted
057 * @return the converted value, is never <tt>null</tt>
058 * @throws NoTypeConversionAvailableException if conversion not possible
059 */
060 <T> T mandatoryConvertTo(Class<T> type, Object value) throws NoTypeConversionAvailableException;
061
062 /**
063 * Converts the value to the specified type in the context of an exchange
064 * <p/>
065 * Used when conversion requires extra information from the current
066 * exchange (such as encoding).
067 *
068 * @param type the requested type
069 * @param exchange the current exchange
070 * @param value the value to be converted
071 * @return the converted value, is never <tt>null</tt>
072 * @throws NoTypeConversionAvailableException} if conversion not possible
073 */
074 <T> T mandatoryConvertTo(Class<T> type, Exchange exchange, Object value) throws NoTypeConversionAvailableException;
075
076 }