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 */ 017package org.apache.commons.configuration2; 018 019/** 020 * <p> 021 * An interface for decoding encoded values from a configuration source. 022 * </p> 023 * <p> 024 * Using this interface it is possible to store encoded or encrypted values in a 025 * configuration file. An implementing object can be assigned to a configuration 026 * object. The {@code getEncodedString()} method of the 027 * {@link ImmutableConfiguration} interface makes use of this instance to decode 028 * the value read from the configuration file before it is passed to the caller. 029 * </p> 030 * <p> 031 * By providing custom implementations of this interface an application can add 032 * support for different kinds of encoded strings in configuration files. 033 * </p> 034 * 035 * @since 2.0 036 */ 037public interface ConfigurationDecoder 038{ 039 /** 040 * Decodes the specified string. This method is called with a string in 041 * encoded form read from a configuration file. An implementation has to be 042 * perform an appropriate decoding and return the result. This result is 043 * passed to the calling application; so it should be in a readable form. 044 * 045 * @param s the string to be decoded (not <b>null</b>) 046 * @return the decoded string 047 */ 048 String decode(String s); 049}