Question

I’m having a bit of trouble trying to get class association’s to work correctly.

I have a vector of class objects, named Items. Each item has a values such as a name, price, etc. Inside the Items class there are setters and getters to change the values and to return them.

std::string choice; // users choice
ListOfOrders::iterator iter = orderList->end(); iter--; 
 // the last order inserted, ignore this this is used to get the last order so
 //we can pass the items to it (the order class has a vector of pointers
 //(items) that we are trying to pass to now.)

ListOfItems::iterator itemiter; // make the items iter
listItems(itemList); // function in the main that returns the list of items using the getters and a vector iterator.
while(choice != "x") // until the user quits
{
        // here is my prob, ofc, i can just compare the users entered choice of item (name) to the iterator because thats just returning a pointer to the class object, what i need to do it call the getName() getter from each of the objects and comparer that
    (*itemiter)->getName() = find (itemList->begin(), itemList->end(), choice);

    if (itemiter == itemList->end())
    {  
        std::cout << "sorry item not found please try again." << std::endl; 
    }
    else 
    {
        (*iter)->addItem(*itemiter); // pass the item object off to the order object's vector of items.
    }
}

I know something like this(see below(haven’t compiled it, just quickly typed it to give you a idea)) could be used and it would work, but there must be a better way right?

std::string choice; // users choice
cin >> choice;
ListOfOrders::iterator iter = orderList->end(); iter--; // the last order inserted
if(lookForItem(choice))
{
    std::cout << "Yes\n";
}
else
{
    std::cout << "no\n";
}

bool lookForItem(std::string choice)
{
    ListOfItems::iterator itemiter; // make the items iter

    itemiter = itemList->begin();
    while(itemiter != itemList->end())
    {
        if((*itemiter)->getName() == choice)
        {
            (*iter)->addItem(*itemiter);
        }
        iter++;
    }
    return false;
}

Answer 1

In modern C++, this is fairly simple with a lambda:

auto it = std::find_if(itemList.begin(), itemList.end(),
                       [&choice](Item const & x) { return x.name == choice; } );

It’s not hard to spell out the lambda as a traditional predicate, of course:

struct FindItemByName
{
  FindItemByName(std::string const & s) : choice(s) { }
  bool operator()(Item const & x) const { return x.name == choice; }
private:
  std::string const & choice;
};

ListOfItems::iterator it
  = std::find_if(itemList.begin(), itemList.end(), FindItemByName(choice));