Class WeakTaxon

All Implemented Interfaces:
Annotatable, Taxon, Changeable

public class WeakTaxon extends AbstractTaxon
Deprecated.
replaced by classes in org.biojavax.bio.taxa

An implementation of Taxon that keeps only weak references to children, but full references to parents.

This may be suitable for deriving memory-savy implementations of TaxonFactory.

To manipulate the children set, use the getChildrenRaw and setChildrenRaw methods. These 'box' the actual weak reference, but recognize null to mean that there are no children currently known. A code-fragment may wish to do something like this:


 Set children = weakTaxon.getChildrenRaw();
 if(children == null) {
   children = new HashSet();
   weakTaxon.setChildrenRaw(children);
 }
 // do stuff to update child set e.g. add children 
 

Author:
Matthew Pocock
  • Field Details

  • Constructor Details

  • Method Details

    • getParent

      public Taxon getParent()
      Deprecated.
      Description copied from interface: Taxon

      The parent of this Taxon.

      Taxa live within a tree data-structure, so every taxon has a single parent except for the root type. This has the null parent.

      Returns:
      the parent Taxon, or null if this is the root type.
    • getChildren

      public Set getChildren()
      Deprecated.
      Description copied from interface: Taxon

      The children of this Taxon.

      Taxa live within a tree data-structure, so every taxon has zero or more children. In the case of zero children, the empty set is returned.

      ? read-only ? dynamicaly updated with taxon object ? copy of data ?

      Returns:
      the Set (possibly empty) of all child Taxa
    • getChildrenRaw

      public Set getChildrenRaw()
      Deprecated.
    • setChildrenRaw

      public void setChildrenRaw(Set children)
      Deprecated.