Thread: A class pointer to the class I come from

I have the following class:
[tag]

Code:

class myGui
{
public: 
  MyWidget w;					
  swmArray s;
  GearWidget g;
  quitDialog q;          
  int browseNum;
  DirectoryWindow mw[20];
public:
  myGui(void);
};

[/tag]
I want the members (which are other classes I made) to have a pointer to the instance of myGui to which they are a member.

For example in the class MyWidget I wish to have a member "myGui *mypointer;" thats points to the instance of myGui that contains my instance of MyWidget.

You see the problem. They will #include each other. How do I go about this?

-- Paul

If you need to, put class Widget; or whatever other class you have in front of everything so that you can use pointers to any class before the classes are actually defined.

ie:

Code:

class A;
class B {
  A* func();
};
class A {
  //...
};

If you want your member objects to contain a pointer to the object they are a member of, use a constructor. Pass 'this' to each object that way. ie:

Code:

class Widget { //...
private:
  Widget();  //this makes sure that the only possible constructor is the bottom one
// You may want to declare a copy constructor to be safe
  Container* parent;
public:
  Widget(const Container* b) : parent(b) {}
};
class Container {
public:
  Widget object;
  C object2;  //some other widget
  Container() : object(this), object2(this) {}
}

>> If you need to, put class Widget; or whatever other class you have in front of everything so that you can use pointers to any class before the classes are actually defined.

Aka 'forward declarations'.

Note, it could be a pointer or a reference with just the forward declaration.