[boost] Simple yet interesting object factory

From: Marco Costalba (mcostalba_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-08-31 14:07:37

This is a simple yet interesting object factory.

Main points are:

- Support for many class hierarchies at the same time

- Object constructor arguments with generic type

- Object constructor overloading

- Support for user supplied 'object create' functions

- Dynamic class registering/unregistering

- No RTTI or special library requirements, only an associative
container is used.

- And finally the most important: 100% type safe also at runtime

Especially constructor overloading and runtime type safety are two
niceties you won't find easily googling around.

You can view as HTML page a simple and commented test program here:
http://digilander.libero.it/mcostalba/simple_factory/main.cpp.html

A page with the source is here:
http://digilander.libero.it/mcostalba/simple_factory/simple_factory.hpp.html

Below are the links to the actual files:
http://digilander.libero.it/mcostalba/simple_factory/main.cpp
http://digilander.libero.it/mcostalba/simple_factory/simple_factory.hpp

I'm sorry if you find the comments a bit "entry level", but they are
intended for a wider audience.

Finally there are a couple of bugs that I won't reveal ;-) they are
not easy to spot and fixing them will complicate the code.

Because this is intended more as a presentation of the ideas then
production code I will fix them when I'll be confident design is
sound.

Anyhow I keep a separated test framework with about 40 tests to
exercise the factory under different paths. So I would say this is
'working' code.

Any comment or hint on how to improve the design or implementation
would be very appreciated.

Thanks
Marco