Here's one of the most popular examples. We can say classic. The data is serialized into, say, json. The structure has an enum-field that you want to save in text form (not as a number). All. Stop. There is no easy way to solve this elementary problem in C ++. (c)
... But I really want to.
Over the past year, I have seen how in almost every project a developer has proposed his own vision of this problem. And everywhere there was duplication of code, everywhere there were some kind of crutches, and "subtleties". What is really there, I myself have to return to this topic from time to time. Enough. I decided to close the issue once and for all, at least for myself.
The code is far from perfect (I hope anonymous will correct it), but it does its job. Maybe someone will come in handy:
Implementation
// enum_string.h
#pragma once
#define DECLARE_ENUM(T, values...) \
enum class T { values, MAX }; \
char enum_##T##_base[sizeof(#values)] = #values; \
const char* T##_tokens[static_cast<__underlying_type(T)>(T::MAX)]; \
const char* const* T##_tmp_ptr = tokenize_enum_string( \
const_cast<char*>(enum_##T##_base), sizeof(#values), T##_tokens,\
static_cast<__underlying_type(T)>(T::MAX));
#define enum_to_string(T, value) \
(T##_tokens[static_cast<__underlying_type(T)>(value)])
static const char* const* tokenize_enum_string(char* base,
int length,
const char* tokens[],
int size) {
int count = 0;
tokens[count++] = base;
for (int i = 1; i < length; ++i) {
if (base[i] == ',') {
base[i] = '\0';
if (count == size) {
return tokens;
}
do {
if (++i == length) {
return tokens;
}
} while (' ' == base[i]);
tokens[count++] = base + i;
}
}
return tokens;
}
static bool string_equals(const char* a, const char* b) {
int i = 0;
for (; a[i] && b[i]; ++i) {
if (a[i] != b[i]) {
return false;
}
}
return (a[i] == b[i]);
}
static int string_to_enum_int(const char* const tokens[], int max,
const char* value) {
for (int i = 0; i < max; ++i) {
if (string_equals(tokens[i], value)) {
return i;
}
}
return max;
}
#define string_to_enum(T, value) \
static_cast<T>(string_to_enum_int( \
T##_tokens, static_cast<__underlying_type(T)>(T::MAX), value))
You can easily replace working with strings with your favorite libraries, most of the code here is just string parsing (I really wanted to do without STL).
The main idea was to ensure bijectivity set of enum and its string equivalent, and make the implementation of the universal in the number of elements ( goodbye, vyrviglazny hardkodny macro _NARG ). Well, so that the use is as cute as possible.
example of use
// main.cpp
#include <iostream>
#include "enum_string.h"
DECLARE_ENUM(LogLevel, // enum class LogLevel
Alert, // LogLevel::Alert
Critical, // LogLevel::Critical
Error, // LogLevel::Error
Warning, // LogLevel::Warning
Notice, // LogLevel::Notice
Info, // LogLevel::Info
Debug // LogLevel::Debug
);
int main() {
// serialize
LogLevel a = LogLevel::Critical;
std::cout << enum_to_string(LogLevel, a) << std::endl;
// deserialize
switch (string_to_enum(LogLevel, "Notice")) {
case LogLevel::Alert: {
std::cout << "ALERT" << std::endl;
} break;
case LogLevel::Critical: {
std::cout << "CRITICAL" << std::endl;
} break;
case LogLevel::Error: {
std::cout << "ERROR" << std::endl;
} break;
case LogLevel::Warning: {
std::cout << "WARN" << std::endl;
} break;
case LogLevel::Notice: {
std::cout << "NOTICE" << std::endl;
} break;
case LogLevel::Info: {
std::cout << "INFO" << std::endl;
} break;
case LogLevel::Debug: {
std::cout << "DEBUG" << std::endl;
} break;
case LogLevel::MAX: {
std::cout << "Incorrect value" << std::endl;
} break;
}
return 0;
}
As for me, it does not need additional explanation.
Also, uploaded to github .
Critics are kindly invited to review.