dynamic - Dynamically creating an instance of a class from a string containing the class name in C++

Question

Lets say I have a base class with 100 children:

class Base { 
  virtual void feed();
  ...   
};
class Child1 : public Base {
  void feed();  //specific procedure for feeding Child1
  ... 
};
...
class Child100 : public Base { 
  void feed();  //specific procedure for feeding Child100
  ...
};

At runtime I want to read a file that contains which children to create and feed. Lets say I've read the file and the vector of strings "names" contains the names of the child classes (ie. Child1, Child4, Child99). Now I'm going to iterate through these strings, create an instance of the specific child, and feed it with its specific feeding procedure:

vector<Base *> children;    
for (vector<string>::iterator it = names.begin(); it != names.end(); ++it) {
  Base * child = convert_string_to_instance(*it)       
  child->feed()
  children.push_back(child);
}

How would I create the function convert_string_to_instance() such that if it takes in the string "Child1" it returns a "new Child1", if the string argument is "Child4" it returns a "new Child4", etc

<class C *> convert_string_to_instance(string inName) {
  // magic happens
  return new C;  // C = inName

  // <brute force?>
  // if (inName == "Child1")
  //   return new Child1;
  // if (inName == "Child2")
  //   return new Child2;    
  // if (inName == "Child3")
  //   return new Child3;    
  // </brute force>
  }

Answer 1

C++ does not provide a method for dynamic construction of class instances like this. However, you may be able to use code generation to generate the "brute force" code (like you showed above) from a list of classes. Then, #include the generated code in your convert_string_to_instance method.

You can also set up your project build system to rebuild the generated code anytime the list of classes changes.