--- /dev/null
+package org.apache.lucene.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.
+ */
+
+import org.apache.lucene.index.Payload;
+
+
+/**
+ * Mainly for use with the DelimitedPayloadTokenFilter, converts char buffers to Payload.
+ * <p/>
+ * NOTE: This interface is subject to change
+ *
+ **/
+public interface PayloadEncoder {
+
+ Payload encode(char[] buffer);
+
+ /**
+ * Convert a char array to a {@link org.apache.lucene.index.Payload}
+ * @param buffer
+ * @param offset
+ * @param length
+ * @return encoded {@link Payload}
+ */
+ Payload encode(char [] buffer, int offset, int length);
+}