Generic serialization of tables to external storage is done using a
StarTableOutput
object.
This has a similar job to the StarTableFactory
described in the previous section;
it mediates between code which wants to output a table and a
set of format-specific output handler objects.
The writeStarTable
method
is used to write out a StarTable
object.
When invoking this method, you specify the location to which
you want to output the table (usually, but not necessarily, a filename)
and a string specifying the format you would like to write in.
This is usually a short string like "fits" associated with one of
the registered output handlers - a list of known formats can be
got using the
getKnownFormats
method.
Use is straightforward:
void writeTableAsFITS( StarTable table, File file ) throws IOException { new StarTableOutput().writeStarTable( table, file.toString(), "fits" ); }If, as in this example, you know what format you want to write the table in, you could equally use the relevant
StarTableWriter
object directly
(in this case a FitsTableWriter
).