How to implement generic callbacks in C++
- by Kylotan
Forgive my ignorance in asking this basic question but I've become so used to using Python where this sort of thing is trivial that I've completely forgotten how I would attempt this in C++.
I want to be able to pass a callback to a function that performs a slow process in the background, and have it called later when the process is complete. This callback could be a free function, a static function, or a member function. I'd also like to be able to inject some arbitrary arguments in there for context. (ie. Implementing a very poor man's coroutine, in a way.) On top of that, this function will always take a std::string, which is the output of the process. I don't mind if the position of this argument in the final callback parameter list is fixed.
I get the feeling that the answer will involve boost::bind and boost::function but I can't work out the precise invocations that would be necessary in order to create arbitrary callables (while currying them to just take a single string), store them in the background process, and invoke the callable correctly with the string parameter.