Details
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New Feature
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Status: Resolved
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Major
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Resolution: Fixed
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None
Description
std::optional isn't used for representing nullable fields in Arrow's current STL conversion API since it requires C++17. Also there are other ways to represent an optional field other than std::optional such as using pointers or external implementations of optional (boost::optional, type_safe::optional and alike).
Since it is hard to maintain so many different kinds of specializations, introducing an Optional concept covering these classes could solve this issue and allow implementing nullable fields consistently.
So, the gist of proposed change will be something along the lines of:
template<typename T> constexpr bool is_optional_like_v = ...; template<typename Optional> struct CTypeTraits<Optional, enable_if_t<is_optional_like_v<Optional>>> { //... } template<typename Optional> struct ConversionTraits<Optional, enable_if_t<is_optional_like_v<Optional>>> : public CTypeTraits<Optional> { //... }
For a type T to be considered as an Optional:
1) It should be convertible (implicitly or explicitly) to bool, i.e. it implements [explicit] operator bool(),
2) It should be dereferencable, i.e. it implements operator*().
These two requirements provide a generalized way of templating nullable fields based on pointers, std::optional, boost::optional etc. However, it would be better (necessary?) if this implementation should act as a default while not breaking existing specializations of users (e.g. an existing implementation in which std::optional is specialized by user).
Is there any issues this approach may cause that I may have missed?
I will open a draft PR for working on that meanwhile.
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