Re: Data dispatching using dynamic_cast. How to avoid it?

From:
"Alf P. Steinbach" <alfps@start.no>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Fri, 14 Mar 2008 07:33:11 +0100
Message-ID:
<13tk719f15g185c@corp.supernews.com>
* D. Susman:

On Mar 13, 7:11 pm, Erik Wikstr?m <Erik-wikst...@telia.com> wrote:

On 2008-03-13 16:45, D. Susman wrote:

Hi,
I am working on a data centric project. I have a Process function that
will be called by some thread. The signature goes:
void Process( Base* base )
{
}
There are hundred possibilities on what "base" actually (i.e. actual
run-time type) is. I would like to avoid the bulky if statements to
handle the downcasts. Is there a common approach/idiom to handle that?

You want Base to have a process() function so you can do something like
this:

  void Process( Base* base )
  {
    base->process();
  }

And then all you need to do is override the process() function in all
the base-classes.

--
Erik Wikstr?m


That is not possible since Base objects have been designed as bean
classes due to the used data distribution technology, i.e. classes
holding only data & get/sets (I know this is not good OO but think of
it as a sort of legacy I have deal with)


class IBase
{
public:
    typedef boost::shared_ptr<IBase> Ptr;

    virtual ~IBase() {}

    virtual void process() = 0;
};

class SensibleA: virtual IBase
{
private:
     boost::shared_ptr<BeanA> myData;

     SensibleA( SensibleA const& );
     SensibleA& operator=( SensibleA const& );

public:
     typedef boost::shared_ptr<SensibleA> Ptr;
     explicit SensibleA( BeanA* pData ): myData( pData ) {}

     virtual void process() { ... }
};

IBase::ptr sensibleFrom( Base* p ) { ... }
// This function might be simplified by using a factory repository
// with factories identified by some bean class id.

void process( IBase::Ptr pBean )
{
     pBean->process();
}

Cheers, & hth.,

- Alf

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