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diff --git a/java/client/src/org/apache/commons/codec/Encoder.java b/java/client/src/org/apache/commons/codec/Encoder.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 Encoders.
+ * <p>
+ * This is the sister interface of {@link Decoder}.  Every implementation of Encoder provides this
+ * common generic interface which allows a user to pass a generic Object to any Encoder implementation
+ * in the codec package.
+ *
+ * @version $Id$
+ */
+public interface Encoder {
+
+    /**
+     * Encodes an "Object" and returns the encoded content as an Object. The Objects here may just be
+     * <code>byte[]</code> or <code>String</code>s depending on the implementation used.
+     *
+     * @param source
+     *            An object to encode
+     * @return An "encoded" Object
+     * @throws EncoderException
+     *             An encoder exception is thrown if the encoder experiences a failure condition during the encoding
+     *             process.
+     */
+    Object encode(Object source) throws EncoderException;
+}
+