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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/VFS-443?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=13496487#comment-13496487
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Nicholas Allen commented on VFS-443:
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I don't see why the only public methods have to be overrides. Why even expose
the LocalFile class? It can't do anything more than a FileObject can so as a
client of the library I don't need to know about that class at all if I can
access all it's functionality through its base class. It's a common design
pattern that a sub-class can extend and add extra functionality so I don't
really see why this should be a problem at all from a design point of view.
> 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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