[THRIFT-676] Change C++ code generator so that generated classes can be wrapped with SWIG

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 0.3
• Fix Version/s: 0.4
• Component/s: C++ - Compiler

Environment

Any C++

• Patch Info: Patch Available
• Assignee: Rush Manbert
• Reporter: Rush Manbert
• Created: 14/Jan/10 06:52
• Updated: 01/Nov/11 02:52
• Resolved: 12/Aug/10 21:16

Description

There are times when it would be beneficial to wrap Thrift-generated C++ classes with the SWIG tool (http://www.swig.org). This is a problem, though, because SWIG does not yet handle nested class or structure definitions and the C++ code generator defines the __isset structure within the scope of the class definition to which it pertains.

In order to make the Thrift-generated classes wrappable by SWIG, the __isset structure definition needs to be moved outside of the class definition. For a Thrift generated class called foo, the __isset definition would look like this:

typedef struct foo_isset {
foo_isset() : member0(false), member1(false) {}
bool member0;
bool member1;
} foo_isset;

and the using class would contain this line:
foo_isset __isset;

All existing code will continue to work, and can be regenerated at will.

I have a patch for this.