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    }