Question

Hey i’m trying to make a Button template class, which is constructed with the the button would recieve when pressed (such as mouse position), and a pointer to the function that should be called.

However buttons often return void and take no arguments (Buttons that you press and something happens: they don’t take any arguments, they’re pressed and then just do something.) so how would i generate the classes member functions since apparently i can’t have void as an argument type?

Here’s the source if it’s helpful:

    template<typename Return = void, typename Arg1 = void, typename Arg2 = void> 
class Button 
{
private:
    boost::function<Return (Arg1, Arg2)> Function;
    //Return (*Function)(Arg1, Arg2);              // this didn't work so i tried boost::function

public:
    void Activate(Arg1, Arg2){ Function(Arg1, Arg2) ;};

    void SetFunction(Return (*Function)(Arg1, Arg2)){
        this->Function= Function;};

    //constructors
    Button(){ Function= 0;};

    Button( Return (*Function)(Arg1, Arg2)){  
        this->Function = &Function; };
};

Answer 1

You can specify a template specification of type void, for example, you could use the following variations of the templated class, button:

template <typename rtnVal, typename Val1, typename Val2>
class Button {
private:
    rtnVal(*Function)( Val1 val1, Val2 val2 );

public:
    Button() : Function( nullptr ) {}

    void SetFunction( rtnVal(*func)(Val1, Val2) ) {
        Function = func;
    }

    rtnVal RunFunction( Val1 val1, Val2 val2 ) { return Function( val1, val2 ); }
};

// Special void type, accepting arguments overload:
template < typename Val1, typename Val2 >
class Button< void, Val1, Val2 > {
private:
    void(*Function)(Val1 val1, Val2 val2);

public:
    Button() : Function( nullptr ) {}

    void SetFunction( void(*func)(Val1, Val2) ) {
        Function = func;
    }

    void RunFunction( Val1 val1, Val2 val2 ) { return Function( val1, val2 ); }

};

// Pure void type:
template<>
class Button<void, void, void> {
private:
    void(*Function)( void );

public:
    Button() : Function( nullptr ) {}

    void SetFunction( void(*func)() ) {
        Function = func;
    }

    void RunFunction() { 
        return Function();
    }
};

This then allows you to initialize and use void as arguments, for example, given a void function Print() the following would now be valid:

void Print()
{
    std::cout << "Function has been called" << std::endl;
}

int main()
{
    Button< void, void, void > btn;

    btn.SetFunction( Print );

    btn.RunFunction();

    std::cout << "Finished";
}

I hope this helps to clear things up! 🙂

Note: nullptr is a C++0x keyword, if your compiler hasn’t implemented it use #define nullptr 0