1// Copyright 2013 The Go Authors. All rights reserved.
2// Use of this source code is governed by a BSD-style
3// license that can be found in the LICENSE file.
4
5// Package encoding defines interfaces shared by other packages that
6// convert data to and from byte-level and textual representations.
7// Packages that check for these interfaces include encoding/gob,
8// encoding/json, and encoding/xml. As a result, implementing an
9// interface once can make a type useful in multiple encodings.
10// Standard types that implement these interfaces include time.Time and net.IP.
11// The interfaces come in pairs that produce and consume encoded data.
12package encoding
13
14// BinaryMarshaler is the interface implemented by an object that can
15// marshal itself into a binary form.
16//
17// MarshalBinary encodes the receiver into a binary form and returns the result.
18type BinaryMarshaler interface {
19	MarshalBinary() (data []byte, err error)
20}
21
22// BinaryUnmarshaler is the interface implemented by an object that can
23// unmarshal a binary representation of itself.
24//
25// UnmarshalBinary must be able to decode the form generated by MarshalBinary.
26// UnmarshalBinary must copy the data if it wishes to retain the data
27// after returning.
28type BinaryUnmarshaler interface {
29	UnmarshalBinary(data []byte) error
30}
31
32// TextMarshaler is the interface implemented by an object that can
33// marshal itself into a textual form.
34//
35// MarshalText encodes the receiver into UTF-8-encoded text and returns the result.
36type TextMarshaler interface {
37	MarshalText() (text []byte, err error)
38}
39
40// TextUnmarshaler is the interface implemented by an object that can
41// unmarshal a textual representation of itself.
42//
43// UnmarshalText must be able to decode the form generated by MarshalText.
44// UnmarshalText must copy the text if it wishes to retain the text
45// after returning.
46type TextUnmarshaler interface {
47	UnmarshalText(text []byte) error
48}
49