Which class is used to repsent a bounding box?

Today we have a great question:

I noticed in the GeoTools Javadoc (2.5 branch) the following 5 classes that could be used to represent an envelope: Envelope, Envelope2D, EnvelopeExample , org.geotools.geometry.iso.coordinate.EnvelopeImpl , org.geometry.jts.spatialschema.geometry.EnvelopeImpl

Is it possible these different envelope classes are represented by a
single interface that I could reference in my code, or do I need to
pick one? Could we refactor these 5 different classes into a single
Envelope2D class/interface?

The answer is a bit of a pain; but it does go a long way toward explaining what we are about with a spatial library, and why GeoTools may be considered difficult to learn.

Is it possible to have a single interface?

In short there is one interface that represents an "Rectangle" well:
- Envelope - this is a GeoAPI interface defined according to the the ISO 19107 Geometry specification

The Envelope interface stores a CRS and a range of valid values for each axis mentioned by the CRS. If you are really sure you are working with a 2D CRS you can make use of a BoundingBox subclass.

But in actual fact you will need to consider a couple other interfaces:
- When working with Java you will need to use a Rectangle, specifically Rectangle2D.Double
- When working with the JTS Topology Suite you will need to use an Envelope class (defined according to the Simple Features for SQL Specification)
- If you are working with Java3D you will find it has its own Bounds and BoundingBox (and BoundingSphere) classes
- And so on ....

Do I need to pick one?

So yes you need to pick one for your application; the GeoTools library will do its best to work with your needs.

Could we refactor these into a single Envelope2D class/interface?

Internally GeoTools often makes use of a single implementation:
- ReferencedEnvelope

The ReferencedEnvelope is one of the first GeoTools specific classes documented in our user guide, and is an example of something that makes the library unique.

Literally RefernecedEnvelope is a compromise:
- ReferencedEnvelope extends JTS Envelope
- RefernecedEnvelope implements GeoAPI BoundingBox

This gives you the best of both worlds; access bounds in a form acceptable to the JTS Geometry classes (which only wory about the numbers), that also address the need of the GeoTools library to track the Coordinate Refernece System (so we know what the number mean).

Documentation Link

Here is the user guide page that talks about this stuff.