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.commons.jxpath.util;
018    
019    /**
020     * A type converter can be installed on {@link TypeUtils} to introduce
021     * additional type conversions for JXPath. Most of
022     * the time {@link BasicTypeConverter} should be used as the superclass.
023     *
024     * @see TypeUtils#setTypeConverter
025     *
026     * @author Dmitri Plotnikov
027     * @version $Revision: 652845 $ $Date: 2008-05-02 12:46:46 -0500 (Fri, 02 May 2008) $
028     */
029    public interface TypeConverter {
030    
031        /**
032         * Returns true if it can convert the supplied
033         * object to the specified class.
034         * @param object object to test
035         * @param toType target class
036         * @return boolean
037         */
038        boolean canConvert(Object object, Class toType);
039    
040        /**
041         * Converts the supplied object to the specified
042         * type. Throws a runtime exception if the conversion is
043         * not possible.
044         * @param object object to convert
045         * @param toType target class
046         * @return resulting Object
047         */
048        Object convert(Object object, Class toType);
049    }