My goal is to fire a event receiver when a value is changed in a class. My solution to this is using get and set functions. However, I do not want any performance problems when reading the values. In the class below:
class Vertex {
public:
const double& GetX() { return _x; } // should inline automatically
const double& GetY() { return _y; } // ' ' ' '
void SetX(const double& x); // complex stuff in source file
void SetY(const double& y); // ' ' ' '
private:
double _x, _y;
}
I put the definition of the getters in the header files, because this should allow them to be inlined.
My question is: is there any way to automatically call a function when a value is changed that does not require me to include function definitions in the header file? Or is there perhaps a visibility level that allows anyone to read the data, but only the class itself to modify it? Or maybe something else?
I know an alternative approach would be manually calling an update function, but that looks ugly:
vertex.X = 5;
vertex.Update();
Thank you in advance.
Edit:
So far I've heard some great answers. The solution depends on your goal:
However, what about efficiency?
I just worked out a nice trick for the separate read/write-access permissions I speculated about earlier:
class Vertex {
public:
Vertex(double x, double y)
: _x(x), _y(y), X(_x), Y(_y) { } // defined here for readability
void SetX(double x) { _x = x; update(); } // defined here for readability
void SetY(double y) { _y = y; update(); } // update would be the callback
const double& X, Y;
private:
double _x, _y;
}
If all you're looking for is clean, then probably the cleanest way to do this would be to have a "property" object, like in C#:
template<typename T>
class Property {
public:
Property(std::function<void(T)> callback) : data(), callback(callback) { }
Property& operator=(const T& newvalue) {
data = newvalue;
callback(data);
return *this;
}
operator T() const {
return data;
}
private:
T data;
std::function<void(T)> callback;
};
class Vertex {
public:
Vertex() : X(&xcallback), Y(&ycallback) { }
Property<double> X, Y;
};
(The functions are inline for conciseness on SO, you can move them out if you want.) Then you can do
Vertex v;
v.X = 4;
v.Y = 2.3443;
And every time the value is assigned to, the respective callback will be called. And you can use v.X
and v.Y
in place of wherever you'd use a double
as well so they behave like normal double
s (except for the fact that you'd have to implement -=
, +=
, etc).