Hi,<br><br>Currently I&#39;m using Boost.Signals to transfer Packet objects to subscribers. Right now my Boost.Signal looks like below:<br><br>boost::signal&lt;void (Packet const&amp; p)&gt;<br><br>Right now Packet is the base class for several other packet types, each having the specific data a subscriber needs access to. Of course, given this design, the only way to obtain the data is to perform a downcast via static_cast or dynamic_cast:<br>
<br>WalkPacket const&amp; wp = static_cast&lt;WalkPacket const&amp;&gt;( p ); // &#39;p&#39; here is a generic Packet object.<br><br>This is obviously bad design since it isn&#39;t type safe at all. It&#39;s also repetitive and tedious since each subscriber must duplicate the logic to perform the downcast. I&#39;m wondering if there&#39;s anything in Boost you guys can suggest that I use to make this a little better. I would prefer to have a common Signal object that can take differently typed Slot objects. For example, I want to pass in a slot that looks like: &quot;void (WalkPacket&amp; p)&quot; and have the signal utilize implicit conversions or something. Templates aren&#39;t even being used here because I can&#39;t find a way to fit them in, since everything is being done at runtime and not compile time.<br>
<br>Keep this important note in mind: The type of the packet that will be dispatched to subscribers can only be known at compile time via a factory method. Data is received from the network, and that data is packed into the correct packet and returned as a Packet* base class pointer, so that we can transfer the data to subscribers through a common interface.<br>