Automatically decide which class to use for data processing - c++

Question

I have a big project where I faced a problem, which can be shortly formulated as following:
I had a class which is created temporally and used to process and modify some data (let's call it "worker"). Now I have two workers and two corresponding data formats. The data array can contain mixed data, how to make my programm automatically decide which worker class it should create and use for data processing? How to make this in the best way?
To illustrate this problem I wrote small example programm, which is analogical to my project.
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
using namespace std;
const int NInputs = 10;
struct TOutput {
int i;
};
class TProcess {
public:
TProcess( const vector<TInput>& i ){ fInput = i; }
void Run();
void GetOutput( TOutput& o ) { o = fOutput; }
private:
vector<TInput> fInput;
TOutput fOutput;
};
#if 0
struct TInput {
int i;
};
class TWorker{
public:
void Init( int i ) { fResult = i; }
void Add( int i ) { fResult += i; }
int Result() { return fResult; }
private:
int fResult;
};
#else
struct TInput {
int i;
};
class TWorker {
public:
void Init( int i ) { fResult = i; }
void Add( int i ) { fResult ^= i; }
int Result() { return fResult; }
private:
int fResult;
};
#endif
void TProcess::Run() {
TWorker worker;
worker.Init(0);
for( int i = 0; i < fInput.size(); ++i )
worker.Add(fInput[i].i);
fOutput.i = worker.Result();
}
int main() {
vector<TInput> input(NInputs);
for ( int i = 0; i < NInputs; i++ ) {
input[i].i = i;
}
TProcess proc(input);
proc.Run();
TOutput output;
proc.GetOutput(output);
cout << output.i << endl;
}
The example is very simple, but that doesn't means that it's simply possible to transform it to one function --- it corresponds to big project. Therefore it is not possible to:
delete classes or functions, which already exists (but possible to modify them and create new)
make workers static or create only one copy of worker (each workers are temporary in many complicated functions and loops)
So how to modify it such that this will be something like this:
// TODO: TProcess declaration
struct TInput1 {
int i;
};
class TWorker1{
public:
void Init( TInput1 i ) { fResult = i; }
void Add( TInput1 i ) { fResult += i.i; }
int Result() { return fResult; }
private:
int fResult;
};
#else
struct TInput2 {
int i;
};
class TWorker2 {
public:
void Init( TInput2 i ) { fResult = i.i; }
void Add( TInput2 i ) { fResult ^= i.i; }
int Result() { return fResult; }
private:
int fResult;
};
void TProcess::Run() {
for( int i = 0; i < fInput.size(); ++i ) {
// TODO: choose and create a worker
worker.Add(fInput[i].i);
// TODO: get and save result
}
fOutput.i = worker.Result();
}
int main() {
vector<TInputBase> input(NInputs);
// TODO: fill input
TProcess proc(input);
proc.Run();
TOutput output;
proc.GetOutput(output);
cout << output.i << endl;
}
My initial idea was to use basic class and template functions, but there is no template virtual functions...

Answer 1

You've got the right idea with the vector<TInputBase> declaration in your second example -- you need to have a common base class for all inputs, and similarly for all workers:
class TInput {
}
class TInput1 : public TInput { ... }
class TInput2 : public TInput { ... }
class TWorker {
public:
void Init(TInput *input) = 0;
void Add(TInput *input) = 0;
int Result() = 0;
}
class TWorker1 : public TWorker { ... }
class TWorker2 : public TWorker { ... }
Note, however, that this means all workers can only take a TInput * as input and you will need to cast to the correct input class inside each worker class.
The simplest way to decide which worker class to use for a given input is to ask the input itself! You can have a virtual function in the input class that creates the right kind of worker:
class TInput {
virtual TWorker *createWorker() = 0;
}
class TInput1 : public TInput {
TWorker *createWorker() {
return new TWorker1();
}
}
class TInput2 : public TInput {
TWorker *createWorker() {
return new TWorker2();
}
}
If this is not possible for some reason, you can use typeid to determine the type of the input and create a corresponding worker instance.