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Hi Guys

NOTE: I changed the subject and really any further discussion on this
topic should go to
sbml-interoperability@caltech.edu

I'm not sure why Neil thinks the functions are deprecated ! The functions
on SBase are not documented, because the implementation on SBase is a
helper function for existing users. New users should really use the
set/get Id/Name functions on the appropriate derived class.

Just for the record - sorry if I'm repeating myself :-)

In libSBML-3 and earlier the id and name attributes were members of the
base class SBase. This was a MISMATCH with the SBML specification. This
inconsistency caused problems for new users. It also provided the
opportunity to set an attribute on an element that did not in fact have
that attribute - creating invalid SBML.

In order to address these issues and pave the way for SBML L3
extensibility, libSBML-4 moved the id and name attributes from SBase to
the derived classes (where appropriate). This caused problems for
existing users who use the base class to loop through different elements
within the model and required set/get Id/Name. So libSBML-4 added the
functions back to SBase as a helper function. These functions merely
look at the SBMLTypeCode on the object and use a switch statement to
cast the object
to the appropriate class before calling the class specific function.

SBMLTypeCode_t type = this->getTypeCode();

switch(type)
{
case SBML_COMPARTMENT:
return static_cast <const Compartment *> (this)->getId();
break;

...

LibSBML for SBML L3 core and earlier levels will have this
functionality. However, once libSBML becomes extendible we anticipate
that package developers will provide code for their own package which
will communicate with the core libSBML but not impact the code directly.
Thus as packages introduce new elements derived from SBase the facility
to setId/Name from the SBase class may be lost.

If you commonly use get/set Id/Name on an SBase object it may be worth
implementing your own helper function to do this :-)

Sarah





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