Cant' cast a class with multiple inheritance
- by Jay S.
I am trying to refactor some code while leaving existing functionality in tact. I'm having trouble casting a pointer to an object into a base interface and then getting the derived class out later. The program uses a factory object to create instances of these objects in certain cases.
Here are some examples of the classes I'm working with.
// This is the one I'm working with now that is causing all the trouble.
// Some, but not all methods in NewAbstract and OldAbstract overlap, so I
// used virtual inheritance.
class MyObject : virtual public NewAbstract, virtual public OldAbstract { ... }
// This is what it looked like before
class MyObject : public OldAbstract { ... }
// This is an example of most other classes that use the base interface
class NormalObject : public ISerializable
// The two abstract classes. They inherit from the same object.
class NewAbstract : public ISerializable { ... }
class OldAbstract : public ISerializable { ... }
// A factory object used to create instances of ISerializable objects.
template<class T> class Factory
{
public:
...
virtual ISerializable* createObject() const
{
return static_cast<ISerializable*>(new T()); // current factory code
}
...
}
This question has good information on what the different types of casting do, but it's not helping me figure out this situation. Using static_cast and regular casting give me error C2594: 'static_cast': ambiguous conversions from 'MyObject *' to 'ISerializable *'. Using dynamic_cast causes createObject() to return NULL. The NormalObject style classes and the old version of MyObject work with the existing static_cast in the factory.
Is there a way to make this cast work? It seems like it should be possible.
