Nicholas Allen created VFS-443:
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Summary: Need an easy way to convert from a FileObject to a File
Key: VFS-443
URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/VFS-443
Project: Commons VFS
Issue Type: Bug
Affects Versions: 2.0
Reporter: Nicholas Allen
Fix For: 2.1
I've seen the reasons why Apache does not want to provide an easy way to
convert from a FileObject to a java.io.File and those reasons make sense -
however, I think that some things are being overlooked and there are still
valid reasons for needing to convert from a FileObject to a File.
Firstly, I would like to always use Apache VFS for everything I do - even if I
know it's only on the local file system. The reasons for this are:
1. it makes the code more flexible (it might start of being local file system
and then as specs change it could become a requirement to work over http or
inside zip files for example).
2. The API is nicer to use than the java.io.File and it's easier to write cross
platform code using it (file separator is always "/" etc).
So if I work with Apache VFS for local file system use I would like to be able
to get back to a java.io.File in case I need to interface with same other
library. I would like a method that converted to a File or null if not
possible. This would allow me to take an alternate action (eg copy file to
local temp file if it's not already a local file). There's no need to copy the
file if it is already local.
The simplest fix for this is to just make the getLocalFile() method in
LocalFile public. Once the user knows it's a LocalFile object it makes sense to
call this method to obtain the java.io.File. So I could write a method like
this:
/**
* If the supplied {@link FileObject} represents a local file then this
returns that, otherwise
* returns null.
*/
public File getLocalFile(final FileObject fileObject)
{
if (fileObject instanceof LocalFile)
{
final LocalFile localFile = (LocalFile)fileObject;
return localFile.getLocalFile();
}
return null;
}
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