Is there a way to access the private parts of a different instantiation of the same class template?

Question

Hi all,

In my continuing adventure with templates, I've templated my Container class not just on the ItemType it holds, but also on a Functor argument that determines how it should order the items. So far, so good.

A little problem I've run into occurs when I want to copy the contents of one Container to another: If the two Containers have different Functor types, then they technically are unrelated classes. Therefore, Container A isn't allowed to access the non-public contents of Container B. Is there any good way to deal with this problem, other than making everything I need to access public? Some way to template a "friend" declaration, perhaps?

Example code to demonstrate the problem follows:

#include <stdio.h>

class FunctorA {};
class FunctorB {};

template <class ItemType, class Functor> class MyContainer
{
public:
   MyContainer() : _metaData(0) {/* empty */}

   template<class RHSFunctor> void CopyFrom(const MyContainer<ItemType, RHSFunctor> & copyFrom)
   {
      _metaData = copyFrom._metaData;
      _item     = copyFrom._item;
   }

private:
  int _metaData;
  ItemType _item;
};

int main(int argc, char ** argv)
{
   MyContainer<void *, FunctorA> containerA;
   MyContainer<void *, FunctorB> containerB;

   containerA.CopyFrom(containerB);  // error, containerA::CopyFrom() can't access containerB's private data!
   return 0;
}

Answer 1

You can make a base template class templated just on ItemType, keep the data there, have the full-fledged 2-args template subclass that base, AND put the copy-from in the base class as it doesn't depend on the functor anyway. I.e.:

template <class ItemType> class MyContainerBase
{
public:
   MyContainerBase() : _metaData(0) {/* empty */}

   void CopyFrom(const MyContainerBase<ItemType> & copyFrom)
   {
      _metaData = copyFrom._metaData;
      _item     = copyFrom._item;
   }

protected:
  int _metaData;
  ItemType _item;
};

template <class ItemType, class Functor> class MyContainer:
    public MyContainerBase<ItemType>
{
  // whatever you need here -- I made the data above protected
  // just on the assumption you may need to access it here;-)
};

Answer 2

As you point out, you can also use a friend function:

class FunctorA {};
class FunctorB {};

template <class ItemType, class Functor> class MyContainer
{
public:
  MyContainer() : _metaData(0) {/* empty */}

  template<class CmnItemType, class LHSFunctor, class RHSFunctor>
  friend void Copy(const MyContainer<CmnItemType, LHSFunctor> & copyFrom
    , MyContainer<CmnItemType, RHSFunctor> & copyTo);

private:
  int _metaData;
  ItemType _item;
};

template<class CmnItemType, class LHSFunctor, class RHSFunctor>
void Copy(const MyContainer<CmnItemType, LHSFunctor> & copyFrom
  , MyContainer<CmnItemType, RHSFunctor> & copyTo)
{
  copyTo._metaData = copyFrom._metaData;
  copyTo._item     = copyFrom._item;
}


int main(int argc, char ** argv)
{
  MyContainer<void *, FunctorA> containerA;
  MyContainer<void *, FunctorB> containerB;

  Copy(containerB, containerA);
  return 0;
}