Wrapper classes using C++ decorator templates

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Introduction

This article presents a new (to me at least) spin on the decorator pattern, and demonstrates its use in building a flexible framework of wrapper classes.

Background

The "Gang of Four" describe the decorator pattern as an object structural one, in that it endows an existing object with extra behaviour dynamically at runtime. Here we use templates to add behaviour to a class statically at compile-time.

This article is an extension of a blog post I wrote shortly after "discovering" the technique.

Using the code

The code is provided mainly to illustrate the use of "decorator templates" as a flexible composition technique, though some portions of the code itself may obviously be of use to anyone else building wrapper classes.

The basic form of a decorator template is as follows:

template < [ class CPolicy1 , ... ] typename TBase >
class CDecoratorT : public TBase
{
    // ...
};

Because TBase can itself be a decorated class, this allows arbitrary levels of nesting.

Initially the TBase template parameter was first, followed by the optional policy classes. Though this seemed logical, it led to the decorator template and its policy class(es) becoming "separated" when nesting was used.

The wrapper framework itself takes advantage of this nesting by building up the wrapper in various layers:

There are also two other categories of classes which are not layers:

An example usage would therefore be:

typedef CDestroyableT       < CCloseHandle,
        CDeepCopyableT      < CDuplicateHandle,
        CInvalidatableT     < CInvalidValueT< HANDLE , NULL >,
        CShallowCopyableT   < CCopyByAssignmentT< HANDLE >,
        CTypeHolderT        < HANDLE > > > > >

        CHandleWrapperBase;
        
class CHandleWrapperImpl : public CHandleWrapperBase
{
    bool Open(LPCTSTR szFileName)
    {
        // ...
    }
    
    // ...
};

typedef      CWrapperT
        <    COperatorT
        <    CDefCtorT
        <    CTCtorShallowT
        <    CHandleWrapperImpl > > > >
        
        CHandleWrapper;

To do

This is merely a brief overview of the code, which is unfortunately rather short of meaningful comments. It is therefore my intention either to update the code with some useful comments (possibly Doxygen-style ones), or possibly extend the article to give a full walkthrough of the code. Any feedback as to which people would prefer would be most welcome, as of course would any questions, suggestions, etc. about the code itself.

History

• 20 November 2003 - initial version
• 24 November 2003 - minor correction: decorator is "object structural", not "object constructional" as I misremembered it