/*
 * Copyright 2006-2010 Amazon Technologies, Inc. or its affiliates.
 * Amazon, Amazon.com and Carbonado are trademarks or registered trademarks
 * of Amazon Technologies, Inc. or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.
 *
 * Licensed 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 com.amazon.carbonado.util;

import java.io.IOException;

/**
 * Interface that supports an alternate way of providing a string representation
 * for an object.
 *
 * @author Brian S O'Neill
 */
public interface Appender {
    /**
     * Append the string representation of this object to the given Appendable.
     *
     * @param appendable Appendable object to receive string representation
     * @throws IOException if thrown from given Appendable
     * @throws NullPointerException if appendable is null
     */
    void appendTo(Appendable appendable) throws IOException;
}