001 /* 002 Copyright (C) 2002 Julien van Malderen 003 004 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify 005 it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as 006 published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the 007 License, or (at your option) any later version. 008 009 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, 010 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of 011 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the 012 GNU Lesser General Public License for more details. 013 014 You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License 015 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software 016 Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA */ 017 018 package org.objectweb.jac.aspects.persistence; 019 020 /** 021 * The *StringConverter interface that converts Objects into String 022 * for stocking, and String into Objects 023 */ 024 025 public interface StringConverter { 026 027 /** 028 * Returns a string representation of a field so that it can be 029 * stored.<p> 030 * 031 * @param obj a persistent or primitive object 032 * @return a ready to store string representation */ 033 034 String objectToString(Object obj); 035 036 037 /** 038 * Returns an object from a string, depending on the needed type.<p> 039 * 040 * @param str the value in a string format 041 * @return an object value deduced from the string representation 042 * and from the needed type */ 043 044 Object stringToObject(String str); 045 }