[Biojava-l] Creating my own classes

[Nathan S. Haigh]

Thanks Richard,

I'll think about this and try to do some deciphering. The only thing I'm in
need of help for is possibly some actual code that would take an Alignment
object and return a subalignment based on the positions specified in a
Locations object - it's difficult to make sense of a new language until you
start to pick up some of the basics.

Thanks
Nathan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Holland [mailto:richard.holland at ebi.ac.uk]
> Sent: 27 April 2006 16:37
> To: n.haigh at sheffield.ac.uk
> Cc: biojava-l at lists.open-bio.org
> Subject: Re: [Biojava-l] Creating my own classes
> 
> On Thu, 2006-04-27 at 16:12 +0100, Nathan S. Haigh wrote:
> > My application essentially defines sets of positions from an alignment -
> I
> > call them CHARSETs as they are analogous to CHARSETs in the Nexus file
> > format. I believe in Biojava the Locations object/interface (sorry, not
> > familiar enough with correct terminology yet) is essentially the same
> sort
> > of thing. In my app, the user can use several approaches to define a
> CHARSET
> > e.g. a CHARSET containing just invariable sites, or a CHARSET containing
> > sites above a given % identity.
> 
> You'd be right there. A Location in BioJava represents a range of
> positions.
> 
> > My question is this, if I were to create a class called Charset, and I
> > create several subclasses called e.g. Invariable etc is this reasonable?
> Or
> > should the class Charset contain many methods for creating a different
> type
> > of CHARSET?
> 
> My suggestion would be create an interface called Charset, which defines
> behaviour which you expect all types of Charset to exhibit. Then,
> implement a number of classes which implement this interface, one for
> each type of Charset you have, which each add their own methods or
> special behaviour. If a lot of the behaviour is common, you can define
> an abstract class called something like AbstractCharset which defines
> this common behaviour, and have the others extend it.
> 
> > In my app, a CHARSET needs to be associated with a particular alignment,
> and
> > settings used to define the CHARSET, so my Charset class have variables
> such
> > as an Alignment object, Locations objects etc. I'd like to write a
> method
> > that returns a subalignment based on the CHARSETs associated alignment
> > object and Locations object but I'm not sure how to do this.
> 
> BioJava Alignment objects implement the SymbolList interface, which
> means you can use all the methods from SymbolList to work with the
> Alignment, including the subList() method.
> 
> cheers,
> Richard
> 
> --
> Richard Holland (BioMart Team)
> EMBL-EBI
> Wellcome Trust Genome Campus
> Hinxton
> Cambridge CB10 1SD
> UNITED KINGDOM
> Tel: +44-(0)1223-494416

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