Re: [Geoserver-users] [Geotools-gt2-users] GS 1.5 RC2: Can I read wfs features without default geometry ?

[Andrea A. <aa...@op...>]

Justin Deoliveira ha scritto:
> Hi Balazs,
> 
> So yes it appears that the exception is explicitly thrown when a feature 
>   does not have a geometric attribute. Wether this can be considered a 
> bug or not I am not 100% sure.
> 
> Developers: have we ever supported the encoding of features without 
> geometry? Does anyone know of other WFS's that support it?

I guess the real question is, does GML support the concept of a feature 
without geometry attributes? The answer is yes afaik.

The real issue is that most modules in geotools are designed assuming
a geometry will be there, as everything is Geoserver is (the exception
is really thrown by FeatureTypeInfo.getNativeCRS(), that is, Geoserver 
code).

So, imho this is a direction where we should go, but it's not at all
trivial, since default geometry is widely used. To give you an idea,
FeatureType.getDefaultGeometry() is used in 87 places in the geoserver
code + geotools code that geoserver uses, and 
Feature.getDefaultGeometry() in 119 places (it's quite likely we would
not have to check usage in 200 places, but a quick guesstimate is that 
50 fixes here and there are probably needed).

Cheers
Andrea