[webkit-dev] Type checking / casting helpers

[Benjamin Poulain]

downcast<> fails if you do a useless cast/upcast.

Benjamin

On 10/2/14, 4:47 PM, Sam Weinig wrote:
> This all looks wonderful!
>
> One question though, why downcast<>(…)? Will we be adding an upcast<>()
> function? Since the answer is probably no, could we just call this
> cast<>(…)?
>
> - Sam
>
>> On Sep 25, 2014, at 11:11 AM, Chris Dumez <cdumez at apple.com
>> <mailto:cdumez at apple.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I started working on automatically generating the type *casting*
>> helpers for HTML/SVG/MathML Elements (e.g. toHTMLDivElement()). Until
>> now, we were generating only the type *checking* helpers using
>> make_names.pl (e.g. isHTMLDivElement()). The type *casting* helpers
>> had to be manually defined using NODE_TYPE_CASTS() macro.
>>
>> The type casting helpers are now automatically generated for most
>> types. Part of the solution involved using a templated function for
>> type casting because the types are forward-declared and we needed to
>> do a static_cast<>() (a reinterpret_cast<>() could be used with
>> forward declarations but wouldn’t be safe due to multiple inheritance).
>>
>> I initially had macros in place so that toHTMLDivElement() would still
>> work and would be equivalent to downcast<HTMLDivElement>(). The
>> feedback I received is that we should get rid of these macros and just
>> use is<HTMLDivElement>() / downcast<HTMLDivElement>() everywhere.
>> The new style is very close to C++’s is_class<T>() and Boost’s
>> polymorphic_downcast<T>().
>>
>> I actually started updating the code to do this but I should have
>> emailed webkit-dev about this beforehand. I apologize for sending this
>> message a bit late.
>>
>> Please let me know if you have feedback / concerns / questions about
>> this change. I hope that this email gives you a better understanding
>> of why I am making this change.
>>
>> As I said before, the code base is not fully ported yet so the current
>> situation is not necessarily pretty. I will try and go through the
>> transition as fast as I can, provided that people don’t raise any
>> concerns about this.
>>
>> Please also note that these new helpers still catch unnecessary type
>> checks / casts. As a matter of fact, those are now caught at build
>> time instead of linking time and should give you a nice “Unnecessary
>> type check” / “Unnecessary type cast” static assertion.
>>
>> Also note that the plan is to get rid of TYPE_CAST_BASE() macro
>> entirely and extend is<>() / downcast<>() to all types, not just Nodes.
>>
>> Kr,
>> --
>> Chris Dumez - Apple Inc.
>> Cupertino, CA
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>