Dynamic Object in C++?

Question

I realize that I\'ll most likely get a lot of \"you shouldn\'t do that because...\" answers and they are most welcome and I\'ll probably totally agree with your reasoning, but I

Answer 1

You can do something very similar with std::map:

std::map myObject;
myObject["somethingIJustMadeUp"] = myStr;

Now if you want generic value types, then you can use boost::any as:

std::map myObject;
myObject["somethingIJustMadeUp"] = myStr;

And you can also check if a value exists or not:

if(myObject.find ("somethingIJustMadeUp") != myObject.end())
    std::cout << "Exists" << std::endl;

If you use boost::any, then you can know the actual type of value it holds, by calling .type() as:

if (myObject.find("Xyz") != myObject.end())
{
  if(myObject["Xyz"].type() == typeid(std::string))
  {
    std::string value = boost::any_cast(myObject["Xyz"]);
    std::cout <<"Stored value is string = " << value << std::endl;
  }
}

This also shows how you can use boost::any_cast to get the value stored in object of boost::any type.