Inheritance hierarchy vs. multiple inheritance (C++) - c++

Question

Well, I was thinking about a design decision for the past few days and since I still cannot favor one over the other I thought maybe someone else has an idea.
The situation is the following: I have a couple of different interface classes abstracting several communication devices. Since those devices differ in their nature they also differ in the interface and thus are not really related. Lets call them IFooDevice and IBarDevice. More device types may be added over time. The language is C++.
Since other components (called clients from now on) might want to use one or more of those devices, I decided to provide a DeviceManager class to handle access to all available devices at runtime. Since the number of device types might increase, I would like to treat all devices equally (from the managers point of view). However, clients will request a certain device type (or devices based on some properties).
I thought of two possible solutions:
The first would be some kind of interitance hierarchy. All devices would subclass a common interface IDevice which would provide the (virtual) methods necessary for management and device query (like getProperties(), hasProperties(), ...). The DeviceManager then has a collection of pointers to IDevice and at some point a cast from Base to Derived would be necessary - either with a template method in the manager or after the request on the client's side.
From a design point of view, I think it would be more elegant to seperate the concerns of managing a device and the interface of the specific device itself. Thus it would lead to two unrelated interfaces: IManagedDevice and e.g. IFooDevice. A real device would need to inherit from both in order to "be" of a specific device type and to be managaeble. The manager would only manage pointers to IManagedDevice. However, at some point there will be the need to cast between now unrelated classes (e.g. from IManagedDevice to IFooDevice) if a client wants to use a device provided by the manager.
Do I have to choose the lesser of two evils here? And if so which one would it be? Or do I miss something?
Edit:
About the "managing" part. The idea is to have library providing a variety of communication devices different (client) applications can use and share. Managing merely comes down to the storage of instances, methods for registering a new device and looking up a certain device. The responsibility for choosing the "right" device for the task is up to the client side because it knows best which requirements it puts on the communication. In order to reuse and thus share available devices (and by that I mean real instances and not just classes) I need a central access point to all available devices. I'm not too fond of the manager itself but it's the only thing I could come up to in that case.

Answer 1

I think the visitor pattern is a better choice for this.

Answer 2

I think what Tom suggested might be altered a bit to suit your needs:
class IManagedDevice
{
IDevice* myDevice;
/* Functions for managing devices... */
};
In this case IDevice is an empty interface that all devices inherit from. It gives no real benefit, just make the class hierarchy handling slightly more bearable.
Then, you can have then ask for the specific device (IFooDevice or IBarDevice), probably via some sort of device type ID.
If all you need is to have a common code to manage the devices, and then pass each device to the appropriate place I think you can get away with something like this:
class IDevice
{
virtual void Handle() = 0;
};
class IFooDevice : public IDevice
{
virtual void Handle()
{
this->doFoo();
}
virtual void doFoo() = 0;
}
class IBarDevice : public IDevice
{
virtual void Handle()
{
this->doBar();
}
virtual void doBar() = 0;
}
With the manager calling the Handle function.

Answer 3

I think I'd go for a simple solution of having a base class for Device that takes care of registering the device in the global device list and then static methods for looking them up. Something like:
struct Device
{
static Device *first; // Pointer to first available device
Device *prev, *next; // Links for the doubly-linked list of devices
Device() : prev(0), next(first)
{
if (next) next->prev = this;
first = this;
}
virtual ~Device()
{
if (next) next->prev = prev;
if (prev) prev->next = next; else first = next;
}
private:
// Taboo - the following are not implemented
Device(const Device&);
Device& operator=(const Device&);
};
Then you can just derive all devices from Device and them will be automatically placed in the global list on construction and removed from the global list on destruction.
All your clients will be able to visit the list of all devices by starting from Device::first and following device->next. By doing a dynamic_cast<NeededDeviceType*>(device) clients can check if the device is compatible with what they need.
Of course any method that is implemented in every device type (e.g. a description string, a locking method to ensure exclusive use by one client and the like) can be exported also at the Device level.

Answer 4

when communicating with devices I separated the the device and the communication manager completely.
I had a simple communication manager that was based on Boost.Asio. The interface was something like
/** An interface to basic communication with a decive.*/
class coms_manager
{
public:
virtual
~coms_manager();
/** Send a command. */
virtual
void
send(const std::string& cmd) = 0;
/** Receive a command.
* #param buffsize The number of bytes to receive.
* #param size_exactly True if exactly buffsize bytes are to be received. If false, then fewer bytes may be received.
*/
virtual
std::string
recv( const unsigned long& buffsize = 128,
const bool& size_exactly = false) = 0 ;
/** Timed receive command.
* #param buffsize The number of bytes to receive.
* #param seconds The number of seconds in the timeout.
* #param size_exactly True if exactly buffsize bytes are to be received. If false, then fewer bytes may be received.
*/
virtual
std::string
timed_recv( const unsigned long& buffsize = 128,
const double& seconds = 5,
const bool& size_exactly = false) = 0;
};
I then implemented this interface for tcp (ethernet) and serial communications.
class serial_manager : public coms_manager {};
class ethernet_manager : public coms_manager {};
Each of the devices then contained (or pointed to) (rather than inherited) a coms_manager object
For example:
class Oscilloscope
{
void send(const std::string& cmd)
{
m_ComsPtr->send(cmd);
}
private:
coms_manager* m_ComsPtr;
};
You can then swap around the communication method by changing what the pointer points to.
For me, this didn't make much sense (the Oscilloscope was EITHER attached via serial OR via ethernet and so I actually opted for
template<class Manager>
class Oscilloscope
{
void send(const std::string& cmd)
{
m_Coms.send(cmd);
}
private:
Manager m_Coms;
};
and I now use
Oscilloscope<serial_manager> O1(/dev/tty1); // the serial port
Oscilloscope<ethernet_manager> O2(10.0.0.10); //The ip address
which makes more sense.
As for your suggestion as to have a generic device interface. I started with that too, but then wasn't sure of its utility - I always wanted to know exactly what equipment I was sending a command to, I neither needed nor wanted to work through an abstract interface.

Answer 5

At a first glance, the first approach seems fine for me if all devices need to be managed and no other stuff can be done with an unknown device. The meta data for a general device (e.g. name, ...) would typically be the data one need for managing devices.
However, if you need to separate the interface between the management and the device functionality, you can use virtual inheritance.
IManagedDevice and IFooDevice are both interfaces of the same concrete device, so they both have a common virtual base IDevice.
Concretely (run code):
#include <cassert>
class IDevice {
public:
// must be polymorphic, a virtual destructor is a good idea
virtual ~IDevice() {}
};
class IManagedDevice : public virtual IDevice {
// management stuff
};
class IFooDevice : public virtual IDevice {
// foo stuff
};
class ConcreteDevice : public IFooDevice, public IManagedDevice {
// implementation stuff
};
int main() {
ConcreteDevice device;
IManagedDevice* managed_device = &device;
IFooDevice* foo_device = dynamic_cast<IFooDevice*>(managed_device);
assert(foo_device);
return 0;
}