Should downcasting be avoided while using a class hierarchy in C++?
- by neuviemeporte
Let's say I'm writing an application which works with projects, and exposes different functionality depending on the type of the project. I have a hierarchy of classes for the different types of projects:
class AbstractProject
{
};
class ProjectA : public AbstractProject
{
};
class ProjectB : public AbstractProject
{
};
class ProjectC : public AbstractProject
{
};
Now, I was planning to have an AbstractProject *_currentProject pointer as a member in the application's main class, pop up a dialog box on startup and based on the selection, do:
_currentProject = new ProjectB(); // e.g.
Later, I'll have to downcast the pointer to the specific type to utilize the functionality specific to different Project-s. Somehow this makes me feel uneasy. Is there a Better Way of doing this?
