/**
 * 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.hadoop.io.serializer;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.OutputStream;

import org.apache.hadoop.classification.InterfaceAudience;
import org.apache.hadoop.classification.InterfaceStability;

/**
 * <p>
 * Provides a facility for serializing objects of type &lt;T&gt; to an
 * {@link OutputStream}.
 * </p>
 * 
 * <p>
 * Serializers are stateful, but must not buffer the output since
 * other producers may write to the output between calls to
 * {@link #serialize(Object)}.
 * </p>
 * @param <T> generic type.
 */
@InterfaceAudience.LimitedPrivate({"HDFS", "MapReduce"})
@InterfaceStability.Evolving
public interface Serializer<T> {
  /**
   * <p>Prepare the serializer for writing.</p>
   * @param out output stream.
   * @throws IOException raised on errors performing I/O.
   */
  void open(OutputStream out) throws IOException;
  
  /**
   * <p>Serialize <code>t</code> to the underlying output stream.</p>
   * @param t t.
   * @throws IOException raised on errors performing I/O.
   */
  void serialize(T t) throws IOException;
  
  /**
   * <p>Close the underlying output stream and clear up any resources.</p>
   * @throws IOException raised on errors performing I/O.
   */  
  void close() throws IOException;
}
