Question

I have an object which is shared by multiple threads, I want to lock individual member variables, without locking the entire object, so that different threads can access to different member variables at the same time.
After reading some articles, I write the code using shared_mutex and getter() / setter() functions.

    class Test
    {
    public:
    **// variable, shared_mutex and getter/setter for x**
    double x;
    boost::shared_mutex x_mutex;
    double x_getter();
    void x_setter();
    **// variable, shared_mutex and getter/setter for y**
    ......
    **// variable, shared_mutex and getter/setter for z**
    ......
    };

    double Test::x_getter()
    {
      // get shared access
      boost::shared_lock lock(_access);
      return x;
    }

    void Test::x_setter()
    {
      // get exclusive access
      boost::unique_lock lock(_access);
      // do something with x;
    }

    //getter/setter functions for y and z. 
    ......

The code looks clumsy, especially when the number of member variables increases. I am wondering whether there is better solutions out there for this type of problem.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Since you obviously need the lock only for the short time of actually reading/writing the data, you could just encapsulate it with the controlled data into a type which you then use as member variables:

// note: you probably should add constructors as well
template<typename T> struct synchronized
{
public:
  synchronized& operator=(T const& newval)
  {
    boost::unique_lock lock(mutex);
    value = newval;
  }
  operator T() const
  {
    boost::unique_lock lock(mutex);
    return value;
  }
private:
  T value;
  boost::shared_mutex mutex;
};

class Test
{
public:
  synchronized<double> x;
  synchronized<int> y;
  synchronized<std::string> z;
};

void foo(Test& t)
{
  double read = t.x; // locked, via synchronized<double>::operator double() const
  t.x = 3.14;        // locked, via synchronized<double>::operator=
}