Re: templates of derived classes

From:
"Alf P. Steinbach" <alfps@start.no>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:30:33 +0200
Message-ID:
<59e1mbF2kttleU1@mid.individual.net>
* Zeppe:

Hi all!

my problem is this one, I think that it could be a common one, maybe a
pattern, so if you can help me somehow it would be great. Let's suppose
I have a class Base

class Base
{
 // impl.
};

and a template class Foo

template <typename T>
class Foo
{
// impl.
private:
    T obj_;
};

I use this class passing it as a pointer to various functions:

void bar(Foo<Base> * myFoo);

Now, I would like to derive a class

class Derived : public Base
{
    // impl.
};

and pass among the functions a pointer to Foo<Derived>.

Well, how to do so?


You can templatize the functions, or make the arguments polymorphic, or
duplicate the functions.

I would like to avoid the pointer in T


You have not shown a "pointer in T".

, otherwise a possible solution would be:

template <typename T>
class Foo
{
public:
    template <typename IteratorT>
    static Foo<T>* GenerateFrom(IteratorT begin, IteratorT end);
// impl.
protected:
    T* obj_;
}


Missing semicolon: copy and paste code, please.

defining, instead of Foo<Derived>, a class

class FooDerived
    : public Foo<Base>
{
public:
    FooDerived()
        : obj_(new Derived)


Invalid: copy and paste code, please.

    {
    }

}


Missing semicolon: copy and paste code, please.

Ok, maybe a little bit well written to avoid the protected nude pointer.
Then none of my functions would change, being possible to pass a pointer
to FooDerived. Unfortunately, there is another issue that prevents me
from using this solution. I cannot build my FooDerived objects directly,
because I need to build them via the Foo static function GenerateFrom,
that calls the constructor of the element inside Foo objects.


This particular problem seems to be: you want a factory in a class C to
produce a pointer to an object of class derived from C.

Try out this problem without templates first.

Decide on how the factory should know which type of object to produce.

I think I can delegate the construction of Foo to a factory, and pass it
as a template member of the GenerateFrom static function... but it seems
a little bit dirty solution to me.

Anyone of you has got some suggestion about a cleaner design for this
problem?


It's unclear what the problems are. Possibly some will post a technical
solution to something that might be one of the problems. You have mixed
(1) templates, (2) factories and (3) polymorphism to achieve
/something/, but you have neglected to tell those who might help what
that something is, which is what you should do: explain what you're
trying to achieve, not what you think might be relevant to achieving it.

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