Source code

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 */
019package org.apache.reef.io.serialization;
020
021/**
022 * Interface for serialization routines that translate back and forth between
023 * byte arrays with low latency. (Contrast to Serializer, Deserializer, which
024 * optimize for file size and throughput.)
025 *
026 * @param <T> The type of the objects (de-)serialized
027 */
028public interface Codec<T> {
029
030  /**
031   * Encodes the given object into a Byte Array.
032   *
033   * @param obj
034   * @return a byte[] representation of the object
035   */
036  byte[] encode(T obj);
037
038  /**
039   * Decodes the given byte array into an object.
040   *
041   * @param buf
042   * @return the decoded object
043   */
044  T decode(byte[] buf);
045}