Thread: Accessing/working with member objects of parent classes

*I know this is not the Windows/Linux forum, but this question pertains more to C++ than GUI concepts*

What is the best way to handle it when one class needs to access the members of another class, and those members are objects? For example, suppose I have a main window. That window has child controls (objects), and when events happen with those child controls, menu items in the main window's menu bar needs to be enabled or disabled.

What is the best way to access these parent objects and work with their properties from the child objects? Should I go against the rules and make the controls public? Should I have Get() methods? Friend classes? A better way/best way?

There are several solutions. One solution is a boolean variable in the window class. Another solution is to determine the status of the controls via, for example, IsWindowEnabled().

Kuphryn

Alright. Suppose my application has a dialog, set as a child of the main window. When the ok button is clicked, a number of objects in the main window need to be updated. Text boxes might need to have their values changed, menus might need to be enabled/disabled, a side panel window ("sash window" - the one with a draggable border) has its own controls that need to be updated.

Here's a diagram of what the heirarchy might look like:

main window
dialog
controls within this child dialog
side window
controls within this side window

So what if the child dialog needs to access a method in the side window's class? Should I say something like this (from within the dialog class):

GetParent()->GetSideWindow()->DoMethod();

Can anyone see anything wrong with a friend class?

I know that with GUIs, child and parent relationships are not really child and parent relationships - at least not in the inheritance/polymorphism respect.