Ah, for something like that I personally would use Variant to hold it all, Spirit2.1 (with stringtable > continued parsing trick, Spirit2.1 is in the boost trunk but it works on older boosts' too) to parse it, would give the best speed and is easily extensible in the future while being completely typesafe.
I'm assuming the Spirit 2.1 is just for parsing the xml file. I still need to have a switch statement to determine what type I'm suppose to be storing. Lets suppose for a moment that I've determined the type to be stored (whether Spirit 2.1, tinyXML or some other parser). I've tried making the Destination class a template based on type (see code at bottom of email). Then I created a variant of all the Destination class with the types I wanted. A map was used with a key for the parameter name and the value was a vector of the variants. Matching the parameter name is simple in the get function. I've had trouble comparing the type and then returning just a vector of that type and not a vector of the variant. It seams that since the caller knows what type they want that I shouldn't have to return a variant. This approach seem to be complicating the return value. The only reason to to make Destination a template was to keep track of the type. Is there a way to keep track of the type in the key or something? That way the Destination class can be simple and keep the return simple. The caller knows what type they want and if it isn't there the return vector will be empty. Can you provide some code on what you might suggest? Ryan Code: typedef boost::mpl::vector< Destination<long>, Destination<short>, Destination<std::string> > supported_types; typedef boost::variant::make_variant_over<supported_types>::type supported_variant; std::map< std::string, std::vector<supported_variant>
supported_list;