using Lucene.Net.Util;

namespace Lucene.Net.Analysis.Payloads
{
    /*
     * 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.
     */

    /// <summary>
    /// Mainly for use with the <see cref="DelimitedPayloadTokenFilter"/>, converts char buffers to
    /// <see cref="BytesRef"/>.
    /// <para/>
    /// NOTE: This interface is subject to change 
    /// </summary>
    public interface IPayloadEncoder
    {
        BytesRef Encode(char[] buffer);

        /// <summary>
        /// Convert a char array to a <see cref="BytesRef"/> </summary>
        /// <returns> encoded <see cref="BytesRef"/> </returns>
        BytesRef Encode(char[] buffer, int offset, int length);
    }
}