C++ how to have seperate versions of the same method? - c++

Question

I'm sorry if I don't know the right word for what I'm trying to accomplish.
Basically I have an event handler object which only has a single member. The member is a Stage object.
When the event handler receives an event, I want it to simply use the stage object to call the relevant method. For example:
Event event; //this event is not part of my code, but rather the library I'm using.
Stage s; // my custom class object
EventHandler event_handler; //also my custom class object
event_handler.stage = &s;
if(event == SHUTDOWN) {
event_handler.stage->handle_shutdown();
}
So what I'm trying to accomplish is that, there will be seperate scopes that my program goes into over time, and I want each scope to have access to the event_handler such that they can do something like:
void some_other_scope(EventHandler* eh) {
Stage* some_new_stage = new Stage(...);
eh->stage = some_new_stage;
}
This way, the original event code stays the same, and the event handler will be calling handle_shutdown on a different object than it was originally going to.
So what I want to do is to overload the handle_shutdown method so that there can be different implementations of it. I know how basic overloading works, it can be done by specifying different parameters, but is there any way to have different definitions of the same class method based on the file that the object was created in?
I was hoping to have several files, each with their own some_other_scope() function, and each file can redefine the handle_shutdown method to do different things based on what that file needs.
I'm sure there's a way to do what I want, I just don't know the right words to use.

Answer 1

It seems you want to use polymorphism:
class IStage
{
public:
virtual ~IStage() = default;
virtual void handle_shutdown() = 0;
// ...
};
class Stage1 : public IStage
{
public:
void handle_shutdown() override { /*Implementation1*/ }
// ...
};
class Stage2 : public IStage
{
public:
void handle_shutdown() override { /*Implementation1*/ }
// ...
};
And then
struct EventHandler
{
std::unique_ptr<IStage> stage;
// ...
};
EventHandler event_handler;
event_handler.stage = std::make_unique<Stage1>();
if (event == SHUTDOWN) {
event_handler.stage->handle_shutdown();
}
// Later
event_handler.stage = std::make_unique<Stage2>();
if (event == SHUTDOWN) {
event_handler.stage->handle_shutdown();
}