FeatureCollection cleanup

The FeatureCollection cleanup proposal is now complete. The first batch of work went into the GeoTools 8.0 release, this second phase removes several methods from FeatureCollection. These methods were not widely implemented, and as a result not adopted by client code.
Upgrade instructions are available:

• Upgrade - GeoTools 9.0-SNAPSHOT User Guide

As part of this work Andrea provided an extensive review of the existing FeatureCollection implementations and a number of utility methods have been introduced to make working with features easier:

• DataUtilities.visit( FeatureCollection, FeatureVisitor, ProgerssListener )
• DataUtilities.bounds( FeatureCollection ) // Already existed
• DataUtilities.bounds( FeatureIterator )
• DataUtilities.count( FeatureCollection )
• DataUtilities.count( FeatureIterator )
• DataUtilities.close( Iterator )
• DataUtilities.first( SimpleFeatureCollection ): SimpleFeature
• DataUtilities.first( FeatureCollection ): F
• DataUtilities.list( FeatureCollection ): List  // Already existed 
• DataUtilities.list( FeatureCollection, int ): List
• DataUtilities.iterator( FeatureIterator ): Iterator // also Closable 
• DataUtilities.collectionCast( FeatureCollection ): Collection

For additional information, and an overview of the FeatureCollection implementations please review the detailed change proposal.
If you cannot make the transition today:

• A milestone 9.0-M0 release has been deployed to maven. 
• To switch your maven pom.xml over to 9.0-M0:

  <properties>
     <geotools.version>9.0-M0</geotools.version>
  </properties>
  ...
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.geotools</groupId>
    <artifactId>gt-main</artifactId>
    <version>${geotools.version}</version>
  </dependency>
  

• You can use this milestone release as a rest area until you have time to upgrade.

One of the joys of working on a large stable project such as GeoTools is the gradual change of pace, and the careful planning that goes into keeping projects working together:

• The initial GeoTools 2.0 rewrite provided a clear FeatureResults API acting in a fashion similar to a JDBC ResultSet.
• GeoTools 2.1 introduced FeatureCollection as a superclass of FeatureResults, bringing in the java.util.Collection methods being removed today. This was motivated by an amusing Bring Back FeatureCollection rant from our founder James MacGill - well we tried James and it was a bad idea.
• The transition to Java 5 forced us to remove direct use of the java.util.Collection interface, however we kept the methods for backwards compatibility. It was too easy to introduce a resource leak with the Java 5 for-each syntax:

for( Feature feature : featureCollection ){

    System.out.println( feature.getID() );

}

• With todays change GeoTools programs are ready for the Java 7 try-with-resource syntax as shown below:

try( FeatureIterator iter=featureCollection.features() ){

   while( iter.hasNext() ){

        Feature feature = iter.next();

        System.out.println( feature.getID() );

   }

}

Reference:

• FeatureCollection cleanup (Change Proposal)
• GitHub Pull Request #44
• Issue Tracker GEOT-4181