Re: Help getting to a derived class template given a pointer to a no-template base class

From:
 chris.kemmerer@att.net
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Thu, 27 Sep 2007 06:26:13 -0700
Message-ID:
<1190899573.973146.174870@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>
On Sep 27, 5:36 am, shaz...@gmail.com wrote:

On Sep 26, 9:32 pm, chris.kemme...@att.net wrote:

class PacketBase
{
   virtual ~PacketBase() {}
                ...

};

template<typename T>
class Packet : public PacketBase
{
   std::vector<T> Values() { return m_Values; }
   std::vector<T> m_Values;
              ...

};

class UsePackets
{
   std::vector<PacketBase*> m_Packets;
                 ...

};

... somewhere in the main code...
UsePackets foo;
foo.m_Packets.push_back(new Packet<int>);
foo.m_Packets.push_back(new Packet<short>);
PacketBase* packet = foo.m_Packets.at(1);
packet->Values(); // can't access this function


Would something like this work?

class PacketBase
{
   virtual ~PacketBase() {}
   virtual std::vector<boost::any>& Values() const =0;
               ...

};

template<typename T>
class Packet : public PacketBase
{
    std::vector<boost::any>& Values() const { return m_Values; }
    std::vector<boost::any> m_Values;
               ...

};

class UsePackets
{
    std::vector<PacketBase*> m_Packets;
                  ...

 };

 ... somewhere in the main code...
UsePackets foo;
foo.m_Packets.push_back(new Packet<int>);
foo.m_Packets.push_back(new Packet<short>);
PacketBase* packet = foo.m_Packets.at(1);
vector<boost::any> woot = packet->Values();

You may also be able to wrap the vector itself in boost::any but I've
never done anything like that.

Saul- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


Thank your that idea. I usually don't like to use non-standard
libraries in order to keep my code as portable, and standards based as
possible but I recently attended some classes where Boost was featured
and it looked like it had some very usefull features.

A related question that may actually solve my first problem. The real
issue is being able to create a type from the enumeration I get from
the data packet. If I could somehow morph that into a usable typename
I could dynamically cast the base pointer to the proper derived
template. Something of the form:
   typedef typeid(???).name T;
   PacketBase* base = foo.m_Packets.at(1);
   Packet<T>* derived = dynamic_cast<Packet<T>*>(base);
The problem is ??? isn't an object, just an enumeration.

Another way is if I can somehow pass the type up from the derived
class template to the base class.

In the mean time I'll look into Boost::Any.

Thank you.

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