[gdal-dev] Where is GDALRasterBlock documentation?

[Frank Warmerdam]

Even Rouault wrote:
> Le Monday 03 August 2009 18:07:33 Jorge Arévalo, vous avez écrit :
>> Hello,
>>
>> Why GDALRasterBlock definition doesn't appear in the GDAL class list
>> at http://www.gdal.org/annotated.html ?
> 
> Technical reason : It would just require to add a missing line
> //! Raster block
> before
> class CPL_DLL GDALRasterBlock
> in gcore/gdal_priv.h
> 
> More realistic reason : very few methods of GDALRasterBlock are properly 
> documented + the fact it is a very internal thing that only interest GDAL 
> developers themselves, not GDAL API users and very few GDAL driver 
> developers.

Jorge,

Even is right; however, I have committed a few changes so parts of the
class are now documented.  It should appear on the web site within a
few hours.

>> I'm trying to implement a cache-block system for GDAL WKT Raster
>> driver, but I'm not sure if I should use this class. Maybe is
>> deprecated?
> 
> It's not deprecated : it is actively used by GDALRasterBand.
> 
> But I'm not sure what/why you want to do about block caching for WKT raster 
> driver. Is this a harddisk block caching or a RAM block caching ? If it's RAM 
> block caching, you don't need to do anything as it is the purpose of the 
> GDALRasterBlock/GDALRasterBand and doesn't require to write code to benefit 
> from it.

Jorge - are you wanting to push extra values from pixel interleaved blocks
into the block cache?  This is one of the few reasons a driver would need to
interact with the block cache directly.

This is done in a few drivers.  You might want to use the
PNGRasterBand::IReadBlock() method in gdal/frmts/png/pngdataset.cpp
as an example.

In this implementation accessing a block (scanline) causes it to get
loaded into a buffer on the dataset class, and then the IReadBlock picks
out the part of that pixel intereleaved scanline that are needed for
the band requested.

But - since the scanline is loaded it also calls GetLockedBlockRef() on
the other bands to force IReadBlock() to be called on them and the
block cache items for them to be filled in.   You can use a similar
approach in the WKTRasterBlock driver if you have it maintain a concept
of a currently loaded block - likely at the dataset level - and have
the IReadBlocks operate from that.

There are other approaches too, but I can't think of any examples, so
I'd suggest you follow the pattern in pngdataset.cpp.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
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