Query information from rttr::type

A type object contains automatically a lot of useful meta information, which exceeds the information of the standard type_info object.

struct D { ... };
type::get<D>().get_name();                // returns 'struct D'; remark this is a compiler specific defined string (not portable)
type::get<D>().is_class();                // true
type::get<D>().is_pointer();              // false
type::get<D*>().is_pointer();             // true
type::get<D>().is_array();                // false
type::get<D[50]>().is_array();            // true
type::get<std::vector<D>>().is_array();   // true
type::get<D>().is_arithmetic();           // false
type::get<D>().is_enumeration();          // false

The returned name of the function get_name() returns a compiler depended string. So don't use it directly when comparing with a string literal, but it is very useful for debugging purposes.

This functionality gets more useful when working with other components like properties or variants. For example: when you iterate over all properties of class you might not want to store the values of pointer types. Or you might want to group stuff together, like: give me all primitive properties of a class and so on.

It is also possible to retrieve information about the inheritance graph of a class.

struct Base { RTTR_ENABLE() };
struct Derived : Base { RTTR_ENABLE(Base) };
Derived d;
std::vector<type> base_list = type::get(d).get_base_classes();
for (auto& t : base_list)
  std::cout << t.get_name() << std::endl; // 'struct Base'

Or use a shorthand method to check if a type is derived from another:

type::get(d).is_derived_from<Base>(); // true

The meta information presented in the first code snipped (e.g. is_class(), is_pointer()) will work without registering anything manually to the type system. In order to retrieve class hierarchy informations, like get_base_classes() or is_derived_from(), you will have to add manually some information to the type system. How this will be done, is discussed in the next chapter.

Summary

with a type object you can retrieve additional meta information at runtime