Question

I have the following class definition and it needs a copy constructor so deep copies are made to copy the raw pointers. Can anybody advice on how to best do this?

Using xerces-c++ for XML

class XMLDocument 
 {
 private:
  typedef std::vector<XML::XMLNode> v_nodes;
 public:
  XMLDocument::XMLDocument();
  XMLDocument::XMLDocument(const XMLDocument& copy); 
  XMLDocument::~XMLDocument();

  XMLDocument& operator=(XMLDocument const& rhs);

  void CreateDocument(const std::string& docname);
  void AddChildNode(XMLNode& node);
  void RemoveNode(XMLNode& node);
  void AddNodeValue(XMLNode& node, const std::string& value);
  void AddNodeValue(XMLNode& node, int value);
  void AddNodeValue(XMLNode& node, double value);
  void AddNodeValue(XMLNode& node, float value);
  std::string GetXMLAttributes();
  std::string GetXMLAttribute(const std::string& attrib);
  std::string GetXMLNodeText(XML::XMLNode& node);
  std::string DumpToString();
  XMLNode GetXPathNode(const std::string xpathXpression);
  XMLNode GetNode(const XMLNode &currentnode);

  typedef v_nodes::iterator nodes_iterator;
  nodes_iterator begin()
  {
   nodes_iterator iter;
   iter = xmlnodes.begin();

   return iter;
  }
  nodes_iterator end()
  {
   nodes_iterator iter;
   iter = xmlnodes.end();

   return iter; 
  }


 private:
  v_nodes xmlnodes;

  bool InitializeXML();
  DOMImplementation* impl; //Abstract
  DOMDocument* document; //Abstract
  DOMElement* rootelement; //Abstract

 };

The DOMDocument is created calling a function and so is the DOMElement. So I can’t just call new on these pointers.

Not sure if I just literally recreate all these object?

Example:

document = impl->createDocument(0, "mydoc", 0);

Who’s gone on a downvote rage and not given a reason???

Answer 1

This page might certainly help:
http://icu-project.org/docs/papers/cpp_report/the_anatomy_of_the_assignment_operator.html

Note their is a difference between writing a copy-constructor and an assignment operator but this point is also discussed in the paper.