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
018package org.apache.commons.jxpath.util;
019
020/**
021 * A type converter can be installed on {@link TypeUtils} to introduce additional type conversions for JXPath. Most of the time {@link BasicTypeConverter}
022 * should be used as the superclass.
023 *
024 * @see TypeUtils#setTypeConverter
025 */
026public interface TypeConverter {
027
028    /**
029     * Returns true if it can convert the supplied object to the specified class.
030     *
031     * @param object object to test
032     * @param toType target class
033     * @return boolean
034     */
035    boolean canConvert(Object object, Class toType);
036
037    /**
038     * Converts the supplied object to the specified type. Throws a runtime exception if the conversion is not possible.
039     *
040     * @param object object to convert
041     * @param toType target class
042     * @return resulting Object
043     */
044    Object convert(Object object, Class toType);
045}