Calculate if an object is inside a set of coordinates?

Question

I have a set of X and Y points that builds a shape and I need to know if an object is inside it or not what is the calculation to it ?

X and Y coords example:

Answer 1

You may start from this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_in_polygon

You also might look into JTS Topology Suite. And in particular use this function.

EDIT: Here is example using JTS:

import java.util.ArrayList;

import com.vividsolutions.jts.geom.Coordinate;
import com.vividsolutions.jts.geom.GeometryFactory;
import com.vividsolutions.jts.geom.LinearRing;
import com.vividsolutions.jts.geom.Point;
import com.vividsolutions.jts.geom.Polygon;
import com.vividsolutions.jts.geom.impl.CoordinateArraySequence;

public class GeoTest {

  public static void main(final String[] args) {

    final GeometryFactory gf = new GeometryFactory();

    final ArrayList points = new ArrayList();
    points.add(new Coordinate(-10, -10));
    points.add(new Coordinate(-10, 10));
    points.add(new Coordinate(10, 10));
    points.add(new Coordinate(10, -10));
    points.add(new Coordinate(-10, -10));
    final Polygon polygon = gf.createPolygon(new LinearRing(new CoordinateArraySequence(points
        .toArray(new Coordinate[points.size()])), gf), null);

    final Coordinate coord = new Coordinate(0, 0);
    final Point point = gf.createPoint(coord);

    System.out.println(point.within(polygon));

  }

}

Here is example using AWT (which is simpler and is part of Java SE):

import java.awt.Polygon;

public class JavaTest {

  public static void main(final String[] args) {

    final Polygon polygon = new Polygon();
    polygon.addPoint(-10, -10);
    polygon.addPoint(-10, 10);
    polygon.addPoint(10, 10);
    polygon.addPoint(10, -10);

    System.out.println(polygon.contains(0, 0));

  }

}