Hi,
I am thinking about submitting a library proposal and would like to query wether there is any interest in such a library and chance of success of such a proposal.
The basic idea is to implement the possibility to decorate a class with named properties, such that given a pointer to an instance
accessed by name rather than using set/get methods. Also the type of the instance should not need to be known at compile time, other than
derives from a suitable base class describing the property mechanisms.
There is a rough implementation existing and used in a product environment. Setting and getting is done using appropriate boost functions. Type resolution is done using RTTI (especially dynamic cast). Complex inheritance hierarchies are supported through virtual inheritance from the base class, such that several classes along the hierarchy can contribute
Hi, On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 5:50 AM, Daniel Oberhoff < daniel.oberhoff_at_[hidden]> wrote: properties can be that it property slots.
CRTP and static initialization is used to register properties. Convenient setter/getter function generators are provided as is a mechanism to access nested properties using dot notation.
I'm not sure I follow exactly what you mean, could you give a small example of the interface and usage? It sounds like you are referring to something along the lines of C# properties though I don't immediately see what you are using dynamic casting for or what exactly this provides as a benefit over get/set methods. Thanks. Well, yes, it is in one way like c# (or ObjC 2.0) properties, in that you can have direct access to the variables first, and then override setters/getters later. But the difference is, that properties are accessed by name, and the type of the object does not need to be known. That is set/get methods of the object would never be visible. You only need to know, that the object derives from a HasPropertiesBase class. That is also where dynamic cast comes in, in order to hand the right pointer to the setter method (you may be surprised, but in the case of virtual inheritance the pointer returned by dynamic cast actually points to a different address). I use it in a setting where I generate objects from a factory, and they are returned as pointers to an abstract base class, and the actual type is never exposed. Also accessing properties by name makes scripting very easy. btw, I hope I got this reply addressed right. the problem is I thought this list is identical to boost.users on gmane, so I turned of mail reply, but it seems this is a different list. anyhow, is there general interest in such a library? Daniel -- -Matt Calabrese