001/*
002 *  Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
003 *  or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
004 *  distributed with this work for additional information
005 *  regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
006 *  to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
007 *  "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
008 *  with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
009 *
010 *        http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
011 *
012 *  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
013 *  software distributed under the License is distributed on an
014 *  "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
015 *  KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
016 *  specific language governing permissions and limitations
017 *  under the License.
018 */
019
020package org.apache.isis.core.commons.encoding;
021
022import java.io.IOException;
023
024/**
025 * This interface indicates that an object can be encoded into into a byte array
026 * so it can be streamed.
027 * 
028 * <p>
029 * By implementing this interface you are agreeing to provide a constructor with
030 * a single argument of type {@link DataInputExtended}, which create an instance
031 * from the stream.
032 */
033public interface Encodable {
034
035    /**
036     * Returns the domain object's value as an encoded byte array via the
037     * encoder.
038     */
039    void encode(DataOutputExtended outputStream) throws IOException;
040}