[jira] [Reopened] (VFS-443) Need an easy way to convert from a FileObject to a File

["Joerg Schaible (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

     [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/VFS-443?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:all-tabpanel ]

Joerg Schaible reopened VFS-443:
--------------------------------

    
> 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
>            Assignee: Gary Gregory
>             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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