[Geotools-devel] Type conversion in SimpleFeature implementations

[Andrew H. <ahu...@cc...>]

Hi all,

I noticed that in SimpleFeatureImpl the setAttribute() methods attempt 
to convert an Object into the correct type based on the 
AttributeDescriptor but the setAttributes() method takes an entire list 
of values and does NOT do conversion. The ResultSetFeature 
implementation does not attempt to convert types when setting but does 
convert types when in the next() method.

Example from SimpleFeatureImpl:
public void setAttribute(int index, Object value) throws 
IndexOutOfBoundsException {
         // first do conversion
         Object converted = Converters.convert(value, 
getFeatureType().getDescriptor(index).getType().getBinding());
    ...
}

Question: If I am making my own simple feature implementation, is it 
expected that I do type conversion in the setAttribute method? Is there 
any history behind why there are two pathways (one which converts and 
one that doesn't)? It seems that if the user wanted that they could use 
the validating option (though its nice to do a conversion for them).

Though I'd like to not do conversions, I wanted to check to see if there 
was that expectation or convention.

Thanks,

Andrew Hulbert