On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 19:18:13 -0500, Edward Diener <eddielee@tropicsoft.com> wrote:
The one area where C++ is weaker than other languages for design time UI, and component, development is in its lack of a general run-time reflection mechanism. That is the only area which I see that is holding it back.
I've been toying with using the properties library Reece Dunn recently submitted (in the boost-sandbox CVS) for this purpose. I've got something very sketchy, but it relies on a visitor pattern to "pass" type information to client code in a manner similar to Boost.Variant. I'd prefer a way of storing the type information for each reflectable class statically, and in a generic way, e.g. something like std::map<std::string, property>. This would enable the reflection code could be decoupled from the reflected classes entirely and just operate on this property meta-data. It would also allow client code to lookup individual properties (e.g. by name) instead of having to visit all of them. I'm stumped by how to store this information in any sort of container though, since the properties are of different types. Any thoughts, or is this madness? -- Caleb Epstein caleb.epstein@gmail.com