Details
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Improvement
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Status: Open
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Minor
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Resolution: Unresolved
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1.7
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None
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None
Description
Currently, there are no common interfaces that extend both the encoder and the decoder interfaces. This makes it hard to deal with a codec as a single entity and requires separate treatment of encoder and decoder parts.
For example, let's say you want to develop a storage abstraction that uses an encoding. Right now, you would need to write
class Storage
{
@Inject Encoder encoder;
@Inject Decoder decoder;
//...
}
In practice, encoder and decoder need to match, and most likely both encoder and decoder would be bound to the same implementation, like Base64 or URLCodec. Because of the lack of a common superinterface they need to be specified separately. There are some classes like BaseNCodec that can be used to unify some of the encoders and decoders, but they are too specific and restrictive.
Ideally, I would like to write:
class Storage
{
@Inject Codec codec;
//...
}
Assuming that combined encoder/decoder classes like Base64 would implement that Codec interface, this could be directly bound to a combined encoder/decoder implementation.
It would be nice if these interfaces were added and the existing codec classes (BaseNCodec, Hex, QCodec, QuotedPrintableCodec, URLCodec) could be modified to implement these new interfaces.
I'm happy to contribute a patch if there is interest in this feature.
