GenericConverter (Spring Framework 4.3.30.RELEASE API)

All Known Subinterfaces:
ConditionalGenericConverter
```
public interface GenericConverter
```
Generic converter interface for converting between two or more types.
This is the most flexible of the Converter SPI interfaces, but also the most complex. It is flexible in that a GenericConverter may support converting between multiple source/target type pairs (see getConvertibleTypes(). In addition, GenericConverter implementations have access to source/target field context during the type conversion process. This allows for resolving source and target field metadata such as annotations and generics information, which can be used to influence the conversion logic.
This interface should generally not be used when the simpler Converter or ConverterFactory interface is sufficient.
Implementations may additionally implement ConditionalConverter.
Since:
3.0
Author:
Keith Donald, Juergen Hoeller
See Also:
TypeDescriptor, Converter, ConverterFactory, ConditionalConverter

Nested Class Summary
Nested Classes
Modifier and Type Interface Description
static class GenericConverter.ConvertiblePair
Holder for a source-to-target class pair.

Method Summary

All Methods Instance Methods Abstract Methods
Modifier and Type	Method	Description
`Object`	`convert(Object source, TypeDescriptor sourceType, TypeDescriptor targetType)`	Convert the source object to the targetType described by the `TypeDescriptor`.
`Set<GenericConverter.ConvertiblePair>`	`getConvertibleTypes()`	Return the source and target types that this converter can convert between.

- Method Detail
  - getConvertibleTypes
```
Set<GenericConverter.ConvertiblePair> getConvertibleTypes()
```
    Return the source and target types that this converter can convert between.
    Each entry is a convertible source-to-target type pair.
    For conditional converters this method may return null to indicate all source-to-target pairs should be considered.
  - convert
```
Object convert(Object source,
               TypeDescriptor sourceType,
               TypeDescriptor targetType)
```
    Convert the source object to the targetType described by the TypeDescriptor.
    Parameters:
    source - the source object to convert (may be null)
    sourceType - the type descriptor of the field we are converting from
    targetType - the type descriptor of the field we are converting to
    Returns:
    the converted object