Add basic support for tag-based static polymorphism (#1326)
* Add basic support for tag-based static polymorphism
Sometimes it is possible to look at a C++ object and know what its dynamic type is,
even if it doesn't use C++ polymorphism, because instances of the object and its
subclasses conform to some other mechanism for being self-describing; for example,
perhaps there's an enumerated "tag" or "kind" member in the base class that's always
set to an indication of the correct type. This might be done for performance reasons,
or to permit most-derived types to be trivially copyable. One of the most widely-known
examples is in LLVM: https://llvm.org/docs/HowToSetUpLLVMStyleRTTI.html
This PR permits pybind11 to be informed of such conventions via a new specializable
detail::polymorphic_type_hook<> template, which generalizes the previous logic for
determining the runtime type of an object based on C++ RTTI. Implementors provide
a way to map from a base class object to a const std::type_info* for the dynamic
type; pybind11 then uses this to ensure that casting a Base* to Python creates a
Python object that knows it's wrapping the appropriate sort of Derived.
There are a number of restrictions with this tag-based static polymorphism support
compared to pybind11's existing support for built-in C++ polymorphism:
- there is no support for this-pointer adjustment, so only single inheritance is permitted
- there is no way to make C++ code call new Python-provided subclasses
- when binding C++ classes that redefine a method in a subclass, the .def() must be
repeated in the binding for Python to know about the update
But these are not much of an issue in practice in many cases, the impact on the
complexity of pybind11's innards is minimal and localized, and the support for
automatic downcasting improves usability a great deal.
diff --git a/docs/advanced/classes.rst b/docs/advanced/classes.rst
index 93deeec..7709d28 100644
--- a/docs/advanced/classes.rst
+++ b/docs/advanced/classes.rst
@@ -999,3 +999,86 @@
requires a more explicit function binding in the form of
``.def("foo", static_cast<int (A::*)() const>(&Publicist::foo));``
where ``int (A::*)() const`` is the type of ``A::foo``.
+
+Custom automatic downcasters
+============================
+
+As explained in :ref:`inheritance`, pybind11 comes with built-in
+understanding of the dynamic type of polymorphic objects in C++; that
+is, returning a Pet to Python produces a Python object that knows it's
+wrapping a Dog, if Pet has virtual methods and pybind11 knows about
+Dog and this Pet is in fact a Dog. Sometimes, you might want to
+provide this automatic downcasting behavior when creating bindings for
+a class hierarchy that does not use standard C++ polymorphism, such as
+LLVM [#f4]_. As long as there's some way to determine at runtime
+whether a downcast is safe, you can proceed by specializing the
+``pybind11::polymorphic_type_hook`` template:
+
+.. code-block:: cpp
+
+ enum class PetKind { Cat, Dog, Zebra };
+ struct Pet { // Not polymorphic: has no virtual methods
+ const PetKind kind;
+ int age = 0;
+ protected:
+ Pet(PetKind _kind) : kind(_kind) {}
+ };
+ struct Dog : Pet {
+ Dog() : Pet(PetKind::Dog) {}
+ std::string sound = "woof!";
+ std::string bark() const { return sound; }
+ };
+
+ namespace pybind11 {
+ template<> struct polymorphic_type_hook<Pet> {
+ static const void *get(const Pet *src, const std::type_info*& type) {
+ // note that src may be nullptr
+ if (src && src->kind == PetKind::Dog) {
+ type = &typeid(Dog);
+ return static_cast<const Dog*>(src);
+ }
+ return src;
+ }
+ };
+ } // namespace pybind11
+
+When pybind11 wants to convert a C++ pointer of type ``Base*`` to a
+Python object, it calls ``polymorphic_type_hook<Base>::get()`` to
+determine if a downcast is possible. The ``get()`` function should use
+whatever runtime information is available to determine if its ``src``
+parameter is in fact an instance of some class ``Derived`` that
+inherits from ``Base``. If it finds such a ``Derived``, it sets ``type
+= &typeid(Derived)`` and returns a pointer to the ``Derived`` object
+that contains ``src``. Otherwise, it just returns ``src``, leaving
+``type`` at its default value of nullptr. If you set ``type`` to a
+type that pybind11 doesn't know about, no downcasting will occur, and
+the original ``src`` pointer will be used with its static type
+``Base*``.
+
+It is critical that the returned pointer and ``type`` argument of
+``get()`` agree with each other: if ``type`` is set to something
+non-null, the returned pointer must point to the start of an object
+whose type is ``type``. If the hierarchy being exposed uses only
+single inheritance, a simple ``return src;`` will achieve this just
+fine, but in the general case, you must cast ``src`` to the
+appropriate derived-class pointer (e.g. using
+``static_cast<Derived>(src)``) before allowing it to be returned as a
+``void*``.
+
+.. [#f4] https://llvm.org/docs/HowToSetUpLLVMStyleRTTI.html
+
+.. note::
+
+ pybind11's standard support for downcasting objects whose types
+ have virtual methods is implemented using
+ ``polymorphic_type_hook`` too, using the standard C++ ability to
+ determine the most-derived type of a polymorphic object using
+ ``typeid()`` and to cast a base pointer to that most-derived type
+ (even if you don't know what it is) using ``dynamic_cast<void*>``.
+
+.. seealso::
+
+ The file :file:`tests/test_tagbased_polymorphic.cpp` contains a
+ more complete example, including a demonstration of how to provide
+ automatic downcasting for an entire class hierarchy without
+ writing one get() function for each class.