org.springframework.core.convert.converter

Interface GenericConverter

All Known Subinterfaces:

ConditionalGenericConverter

public interface GenericConverter

Generic converter interface for converting between two or more types.

This is the most flexible of the Converter SPI interfaces, but also the most complex. It is flexible in that a GenericConverter may support converting between multiple source/target type pairs (see getConvertibleTypes(). In addition, GenericConverter implementations have access to source/target field context during the type conversion process. This allows for resolving source and target field metadata such as annotations and generics information, which can be used influence the conversion logic.

This interface should generally not be used when the simpler Converter or ConverterFactory interfaces are sufficient.

Implementations may additionally implement ConditionalConverter.

Since:

3.0

Author:

Keith Donald, Juergen Hoeller

See Also:

TypeDescriptor, Converter, ConverterFactory, ConditionalConverter

Nested Class Summary

Nested Classes

Modifier and Type	Interface and Description
static class	GenericConverter.ConvertiblePair Holder for a source-to-target class pair.

Method Summary

Modifier and Type	Method and Description
Object	convert(Object source, TypeDescriptor sourceType, TypeDescriptor targetType) Convert the source to the targetType described by the TypeDescriptor.
Set<GenericConverter.ConvertiblePair>	getConvertibleTypes() Return the source and target types which this converter can convert between.

Method Detail

getConvertibleTypes

Set<GenericConverter.ConvertiblePair> getConvertibleTypes()

Return the source and target types which this converter can convert between. Each entry is a convertible source-to-target type pair.

For conditional converters this method may return null to indicate all source-to-target pairs should be considered.

convert

Object convert(Object source,
               TypeDescriptor sourceType,
               TypeDescriptor targetType)

Convert the source to the targetType described by the TypeDescriptor.

Parameters:

source - the source object to convert (may be null)

sourceType - the type descriptor of the field we are converting from

targetType - the type descriptor of the field we are converting to

Returns:

the converted object