/*
 *  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.mina.filter.codec;

/**
 * Provides {@link ProtocolEncoder} and {@link ProtocolDecoder} which translates
 * binary or protocol specific data into message object and vice versa.
 * <p>
 * Please refer to
 * <a href="../../../../../xref-examples/org/apache/mina/examples/reverser/ReverseProtocolProvider.html"><code>ReverserProtocolProvider</code></a>
 * example.
 *  
 * @author The Apache Directory Project (mina-dev@directory.apache.org)
 * @version $Rev: 555855 $, $Date: 2007-07-13 12:19:00 +0900 (Fri, 13 Jul 2007) $
 */
public interface ProtocolCodecFactory {
    /**
     * Returns a new (or reusable) instance of {@link ProtocolEncoder} which
     * encodes message objects into binary or protocol-specific data.
     */
    ProtocolEncoder getEncoder() throws Exception;

    /**
     * Returns a new (or reusable) instance of {@link ProtocolDecoder} which
     * decodes binary or protocol-specific data into message objects.
     */
    ProtocolDecoder getDecoder() throws Exception;
}