Question

I have a hirerchy of Message class and Processor class. Each processor can recieve one or more messages on the fly. As each message can have some differnt attributes, I’ve to downcast that message to the concrect message class, to actually process that.
As there are a no. of message classes and process classes, I don’t want to use dynamic_cast.
I tried to use following code, but this is giving compile time error.
Also, I have the flexibility to attach a processor pointer with a message (if needed), but not the other way round.

class Message  
{  
    public:  
    virtual const Message* const getMessage() const = 0;
};

class MA : public Message  
{  
    public:  
    const MA* const getMessage() const {return this;}
    void printMA() const{std::cout<<"I am MA"<<std::endl;}
};

class MB : public Message  
{  
    public:  
    const MB* const getMessage() const {return this;}
    void printMB() const{std::cout<<"I am MB"<<std::endl;}
};

class Processor  
{  
public:  
    virtual void process(const Message* m) = 0;

};

class PA : public Processor  
{  
    public:  
    void process(const Message* m) {processM(m->getMessage());}

    void processM(const MA*  m) {m->printMA();}
    void processM(const MB*  m) {m->printMB();}
};

int main()  
{  
    Message* m1 = new MA();  
    Message* m2 = new MB();  

    Processor* p1 = new PA();  
    p1->process(m1);
    p1->process(m2);
    return 0;
}

Answer 1

I used ‘double dispatch’ finally to get around this. Now, the only thing is that I need to add a function in MessageProcessor’ class, whenever i add a new message type., but i think that is fine.

class MessageProcessor
{
    public:
        virtual void process(const MA*) const{std::cout<<"unhandled:MA"<<std::endl;}
        virtual void process(const MB*) const{std::cout<<"unhandled:MB"<<std::endl;}
        virtual void process(const MC*) const{std::cout<<"unhandled:MC"<<std::endl;}
};

class Message
{
    public:
    virtual void process(const MessageProcessor*) const = 0;
};

class MA : public Message
{
    public:
    void printMA() const{std::cout<<"I am MA"<<std::endl;}
    virtual void process(const MessageProcessor* p) const {p->process(this);}
};

class MB : public Message
{
    public:
    void printMB() const{std::cout<<"I am MB"<<std::endl;}
    virtual void process(const MessageProcessor* p) const {p->process(this);}
};

class MC : public Message
{
    public:
    void printMC() const{std::cout<<"I am MC"<<std::endl;}
    virtual void process(const MessageProcessor* p) const {p->process(this);}
};

class Processor : public MessageProcessor
{
    public:
    void processM(const Message* m){m->process(this);}

};

class PA : public Processor
{
    public:
    void process(const MA*  m) const {m->printMA();}
    void process(const MB*  m) const {m->printMB();}
};

class PB : public Processor
{
    public:
    void process(const MA*  m) const {m->printMA();}
    void process(const MC*  m) const {m->printMC();}
};

int main()
{
    const Message* m1 = new MA();
    const Message* m2 = new MB();
    const Message* m3 = new MC();

    Processor* p1 = new PA();
    p1->processM(m1);
    p1->processM(m2);
    p1->processM(m3);

    Processor* p2 = new PB();
    p2->processM(m1);
    p2->processM(m2);
    p2->processM(m3);

    return 0;
}