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diff --git a/java/client/src/org/apache/commons/codec/Decoder.java b/java/client/src/org/apache/commons/codec/Decoder.java
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+/*
+ * 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.commons.codec;
+
+/**
+ * Provides the highest level of abstraction for Decoders.
+ * <p>
+ * This is the sister interface of {@link Encoder}. All Decoders implement this common generic interface.
+ * Allows a user to pass a generic Object to any Decoder implementation in the codec package.
+ * <p>
+ * One of the two interfaces at the center of the codec package.
+ *
+ * @version $Id$
+ */
+public interface Decoder {
+
+    /**
+     * Decodes an "encoded" Object and returns a "decoded" Object. Note that the implementation of this interface will
+     * try to cast the Object parameter to the specific type expected by a particular Decoder implementation. If a
+     * {@link ClassCastException} occurs this decode method will throw a DecoderException.
+     *
+     * @param source
+     *            the object to decode
+     * @return a 'decoded" object
+     * @throws DecoderException
+     *             a decoder exception can be thrown for any number of reasons. Some good candidates are that the
+     *             parameter passed to this method is null, a param cannot be cast to the appropriate type for a
+     *             specific encoder.
+     */
+    Object decode(Object source) throws DecoderException;
+}
+