Question

So I’m working to improve an existing implementation. I have a number of polymorphic classes that are all composed into a higher level container class. The problem I’m dealing with at the moment is that the higher level container class, well, sucks. It looks something like this, which I really don’t have a problem with (as the polymorphic classes in the container should be public). My real issue is the constructor…

/*
 * class1 and class 2 derive from the same superclass
 */
class Container 
{
  public: 
   boost::shared_ptr<ComposedClass1> class1;  
   boost::shared_ptr<ComposedClass2> class2;
  private:
   ...
}

/*
 * Constructor - builds the objects that we need in this container. 
 */ 
Container::Container(some params)
{
  class1.reset(new ComposedClass1(...));
  class2.reset(new ComposedClass2(...));
}

What I really need is to make this container class more re-usable. By hard-coding up the member objects and instantiating them, it basically isn’t and can only be used once. A factory is one way to build what I need (potentially by supplying a list of objects and their specific types to be created?) Other ways to get around this problem? Seems like someone should have solved it before… Thanks!

Answer 1

Dependency injection springs to mind.