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.xbean.propertyeditor; 018 019 import java.beans.PropertyEditor; 020 021 /** 022 * @version $Rev: 6680 $ $Date: 2005-12-24T04:38:27.427468Z $ 023 */ 024 public interface Converter extends PropertyEditor { 025 /** 026 * Gets the the type of object supported by this converter. 027 * @return 028 */ 029 Class getType(); 030 031 /** 032 * Converts the supplied object to text. If value is null, null will be returned. If value is not an instance of 033 * the this converter's type, a PropertyEditorException will be thrown. 034 * 035 * @param value an instance of the editor type 036 * @return the text equivalent of the value 037 * @throws PropertyEditorException if an error occurs while converting the value to a String (this is very rare) 038 */ 039 String toString(Object value) throws PropertyEditorException; 040 041 /** 042 * Converts the supplied text in to an instance of the editor type. If text is null, null will be returned. 043 * 044 * @param text the text to convert 045 * @return an instance of the editor type 046 * @throws PropertyEditorException if an error occurs while converting the text to an object 047 */ 048 Object toObject(String text) throws PropertyEditorException; 049 }