Is there a project that reads a c++ header and generates GUI based on some XML schema?
You can use BOOST for compile-time reflection, using this I imagine you could build some sort of front-end for accessing the global variables. I know it must be possible, at least to some degree, using BOOST. If not directly, definitely through the boost-python library. Take a look at their type\function traits
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Here is the scenario:
My swift app collects data from bluetooth and should process them in real-time. These data comes mainly from IMU(gyroscope, magnetometer and accelerometer).
Algorithms that process all of that is going to be written in c++ and utilize some libraries like Eigen. How should I approach such problem? From what I've found:
1) put c++ files into my project, write wrapper in objective-c and bridge it to Swift. Also now sure if I can include Eigen in mobile app easily. This would be tedious process I suppose
2) Get all algorithms as library( .dll, .lib and call it directly from swift, not sure if it's possible)
3) Rewrite all algorithms to Swift, utilize Eigen substitute for Swift, not sure if anything like this exist. Also, this solution is less efficient and would probably fail because of deadlines.
How should I approach such problem? How to solve it in a most efficient way, where I can make use of already exisiting c++ code?
I believe some of you would see this question as opinion based, but I do not know how to state this problem in a way that excludes any ambiguity.
How to run c++ files that uses Eigen in iOS app written is Swift?
Thanks in advance
You cannot call c++ from Swift. However, you can call c++ from objective-c++. And you can call objective-c++ from both Swift and objective-c.
Just make sure that your public-facing #interface code (in the .h file) contains only objective-c. (no classes, no templates, no namespaces, no including c++ headers).
Your #implementation goes in a file with extension .mm which will compile as objective-c++ - giving you an objective-c interface with the full use of c++ in the implementation of the Objective-C object.
c++ objects live quite happily as the member variables of an objective-c++ implementation. However, they will be default-constructed then the objc runtime calls Init. If you are using objects which don't have default constructors, you will need to either wrap them in a boost::optional or a std::unique_ptr (etc).
You can them import the objective-c objects into your Swift program.
Full example for anyone who has not done this before:
https://github.com/madmongo1/swift-to-cpp-demo.git
I've got a DSP audio aglo in C# that I'd like to incorporate into iOS. A friend suggested that I convert to C++ instead of Objective-C, as it would be platform agnostic. Is this a good practice, any pitfalls to be aware of? My instinct is to keep it native with Obj-C. How would I access C++ functions within iOS?
Thank you
You can freely mix C++ with Objective-C, it's known as "Objective-C++". To let the compiler know that is your intent, you need to rename you .m file as .mm.
Mixing code like that is not necessarily a good idea, and fairly pointless if you aim is portability. Better is to keep you C++ in separate .cpp files, and create a bare-bones wrapper class (obj-c++) to pass data between your objective-C and C++ objects (effectively the wrapper is mediating obj-C methods and C++ functions to send and return data).
I have recently posted a couple of simple image processing examples of this on github - openCVSquares and openCVStitch. It's worth you taking a look, just to see how the C++ code is separated out from obj-C.
The openCV libraries have a C++ interface, so using C++ in the project is unavoidable. It would be possible to mash all of the code into .mm files, but that's an easy way to make a mess.
As regards portability, you get this by separating your UI code from your data-manipulation code. You should be doing this anyway for MVC, so it will be little additional work to write your model in C++ as per these examples. The model is portable, the UI is - and should be - platform specific.
Whether you should do this will depend on other factors such as your fluency with each language, the choice of frameworks and libraries, and the likelihood of porting. Audio processing would be a natural candidate for such an approach though.
Some detail about the samples
Don't worry if you can't get the code to run (the openCV framework can be troublesome...) the main thing is to see how the code is pieced together. I've tried to keep the examples very simple.
The C++ code was ported from C++ samples included with the openCV distro: squares.cpp and stitching.cpp. I tried to alter these as little as possible in order to assess this idea of portability.
Roughly, I had to address two issues...
1/ removed any UI code (so we are just sending data back to the obj-C side).
2/ modify the main() function so it becomes a callable function from the obj-C side. In the .cpp header file I declare a simple class with a single static function to facilitate this. Obviously there is scope to get much more elaborate but this should be enough for you to get the idea.
Suppose I have two projects that I would like to link together:
A C++ library compiled with Visual C++ to a DLL file.
A C++ executable compiled with C++ Builder that uses the classes in the library.
I realize that there is no standard C++ ABI and that any attempts to directly link these two C++ projects together will fail. What is a good, automated way of creating a compatibility layer that allows me to accomplish this?
For example, conceivably the C++ library could expose itself via a C interface. Then the executable would have some C++ classes that wrap the C interface exposed by the C++ library. Since there is a standard ABI for C, it would work.
The only question is how to automatically create the C interface and C++ wrapper classes - manually maintaining this would not be an option. The SWIG project looks promising, but unfortunately, C++ is not one of the exits of SWIG listed on their web site. Is there a way to do what I want with SWIG? Or is there another project other than SWIG that would help me with this task?
Or am I going about this the wrong way?
Edit: The core C++ library is intended to be cross-platform. The executable, obviously, is Windows-specific. I don't want to pollute the core library to the extent that it becomes impossible to compile it on other platforms.
If it only has to run on Windows, I would expose the classes as COM objects. They'll still be in a DLL and they can be used by any language which understands COM.
The "standard" way of doing this, in Windows, is to use COM objects. So, that is certainly a good option to look at. In Linux systems, the module interaction model (e.g., executable-DLL interaction) is very different, and ABIs exist for C++.
If you would want to do this manually (create your own COM-like library), it can be a lot of work with many little tricky issues to take seriously. You'll need a cross-module RTTI system, you'll need an interface query/definition protocol, some mechanism to manage memory across modules, etc. Beyond that, to "automate" it, you will probably need a combination of MACROs and template meta-functions.
One cross-platform option that I would highly recommend that you consider or at least look at is using Boost.Python and the Python language as the "glue" between your modules. The Boost.Python library basically does the whole "automated exporting / importing of classes", but it exports your C++ classes and functions as Python classes and functions. And, it is completely non-intrusive and cross-platform, so this is really an ideal example of automated exporting. So, you might consider using Python to write your high-level glue-code, or using Python as an intermediate between the C++ modules, or even reworking the Boost.Python library to use only the "automated exporting" mechanisms to export to whatever interface system you design or use.
I'm sure there a plenty other similar libraries out there. But the number one question is, of course, do you really need this? You might be using a bazooka to kill a fly.
Why not just compile the library with C++ builder as well?
Looking around at swig (I knew swig should be able to wrap C++ in C):
SWIG and C++
If core library is cross-platform why not also write the UI as a cross-platform Qt application and build everything in Visual C++ on Windows.
I have XSD schema files that are huge in size.
I need to create classes from these files but doing so manually is not the right way as there are some tools that create classes automatically, for e.g. Microsoft tool "XSD.exe" that converts the files into c++ classes. I wanted to use them in Xcode but I am finding it difficult to port it.
What is a good tool that can generate objcetive-c classes which can be used on iOS?
Thanks in advance,
Amit
If your generated C++ is standards compliant (no platform specific extensions), you can just use the C++.
I'm tasked with reading Apple's property list files within a c++ application. Focusing primarily on the xml-type plist files specified in OS X, which mimic a xml-type implementation.. Apple's implementation of their property list is described here:
http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man5/plist.5.html
I'm wondering if there are classes or libraries available that already can read this type of implementation within standard c++ (not Objective-C); hoping to find something rather than rolling our own. Are there any open-source implementations of this available?
PList files are not only mimicing XML, they are XML, including valid XML headers.
Any XML reader should be able to parse these files as a result. If you're looking for a logical class that abstracts the files, I'm not aware of any existing ones. Given Apple's documentation, you should be able to write one yourself with an XML reader, although it would take some work for full compatibility.
For topic starter it is too late, I know, but maybe it helps somebody
https://github.com/animetrics/PlistCpp
This is a C++ Property List (plist) serialization library (MIT license).
It supports both XML and binary versions of the plist format and is designed to
be cross platform with minimal dependencies.
Is that target-specific?
For Windows, there is a crude solution which consists of using the functions of iTunes dynamic libraries to parse plist files (either binary or plain text format work).
That's a code originally written to interface an iPod, but you can easily extract the few functions you are interested in.
The repository is on this project page: http://code.google.com/p/t-pot/
Look for the file iPoTApi.h and iPoTApi.cpp, the function TranslatePLIST of the class CiPoTApi.
I wish there were a better solution, at the time I tried to compile it from Apple's sources targeted at Windows but it is a real nightmare, and files are missing. So using their libraries was a considerable shortcut.