/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
 * KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
 * under the License.
 */
package org.apache.shiro.functor;

/**
 * Generic <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functor">functor</a> interface representing a data translation (or
 * conversion) operation.  For a given input, a Translator can translate an input argument into a potentially different
 * output value.
 * <p/>
 * One example of where this is particularly convenient is API translation: translating a 3rd-party framework Exception
 * to a Shiro Exception or vice-versa.
 *
 * @param <I> The input type
 * @param <O> The output type
 *
 * @since 1.2
 */
public interface Translator<I,O> {

    /**
     * Translates the input argument into the required output instance.
     *
     * @param input the input data to translate
     * @return the translated output data
     * @since 1.2
     */
    O translate(I input);

}
