Question

Hi I’m having problems selecting the correct version of a templated class which has an explicit specialization. I’m wanting to select a specialization using a derived class of the class used to specialize. The scenario is:

#include <stdio.h>

class A
{};

class B: public A
{};

template<typename T>
class Foo
{
public:
   int FooBar(void) { return 10; }
};

// Explicit specialization for A
template<> int Foo< A >::FooBar( void ) { return 20; }

void main( void)
{
   Foo<B> fooB;

   // This prints out 10 instead of wanted 20 ie compiler selects the general version
   printf("%d", fooB.FooBar() );
}

As I say in my comments there I want to see 20 being printed out because B is derived from A but 10 gets printed out instead. How do I go about getting the specialization called without resorting to writing a specialization for each and every derived class (my actual scenario has a lot of derived types).

Answer 1

—EDIT : NEW ANSWER Let’s make the original approach more maintainable.
All the important choices can be found in the definition of Foo. It is supposed to be easy to maintain.

#include <boost/mpl/if.hpp>
#include  <boost/type_traits/is_base_of.hpp>
#include <iostream>

class A
{};

class B: public A
{};

class C{};
class D : public C{};
class E{};

struct DefaultMethod
{
    static int fooBar() { return 10; }
};
struct Method1
{
    static int fooBar() { return 20; }
};
struct Method2
{
    static int fooBar() { return 30; }
};

template<typename T, typename BaseClass, typename Choice1, typename OtherChoice>
struct IfDerivesFrom :
    boost::mpl::if_<
        typename boost::is_base_of<BaseClass, T>::type,
        Choice1,
        OtherChoice>::type
{
};

template<typename T>
struct Foo :
    IfDerivesFrom<T, A,
      Method1,
      IfDerivesFrom<T, C,
          Method2,
          DefaultMethod>
      >
{
};

int main()
{
    std::cout << Foo<A>::fooBar() << std::endl;
    std::cout << Foo<B>::fooBar() << std::endl;
    std::cout << Foo<C>::fooBar() << std::endl;
    std::cout << Foo<D>::fooBar() << std::endl;
    std::cout << Foo<E>::fooBar() << std::endl;

    return 0;
}

—ORIGINAL ANSWER
If you can use boost, you can do something like the following :

#include  <boost/type_traits/is_base_of.hpp>

template<bool b>
class FooHelper
{
    int FooBar();
};
template<> FooHelper<true>::FooBar(){ return 20;}
template<> FooHelper<false>::FooBar(){ return 10;}

template<typename T>
class Foo
{
public:
   int FooBar(void) { return FooHelper<boost::is_base_of<A, T>::type::value>(); }
};