1 /* 2 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one 3 * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file 4 * distributed with this work for additional information 5 * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file 6 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the 7 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance 8 * with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at 9 * 10 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 11 * 12 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, 13 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an 14 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY 15 * KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the 16 * specific language governing permissions and limitations 17 * under the License. 18 * 19 */ 20 package org.apache.directory.mavibot.btree.serializer; 21 22 23 import java.io.IOException; 24 25 26 /** 27 * This interface is used by implementations of serializer, deserializr and comparator. 28 * 29 * @param <T> The type for the element to serialize 30 * 31 * @author <a href="mailto:dev@directory.apache.org">Apache Directory Project</a> 32 */ 33 public interface Serializer<T> 34 { 35 /** 36 * Produce the byte[] representation of the type 37 * 38 * @param type The type to serialize 39 * @return The byte[] containing the serialized type 40 */ 41 byte[] serialize( T type ); 42 43 44 /** 45 * Deserialize a type from a byte[] 46 * 47 * @param bufferHandler The incoming BufferHandler 48 * @return The deserialized type 49 * @throws IOException If the deserialization failed 50 */ 51 T deserialize( BufferHandler bufferHandler ) throws IOException; 52 53 54 /** 55 * Returns the comparison of two types. <br/> 56 * <ul> 57 * <li>If type1 < type2, return -1</li> 58 * <li>If type1 > type2, return 1</li> 59 * <li>If type1 == type2, return 0</li> 60 * </ul> 61 * 62 * @param type1 The first type to compare 63 * @param type2 The second type to compare 64 * @return The comparison result 65 */ 66 int compare( T type1, T type2 ); 67 }