Book Image

Boost C++ Application Development Cookbook - Second Edition

By : Anton Polukhin Alekseevic
Book Image

Boost C++ Application Development Cookbook - Second Edition

By: Anton Polukhin Alekseevic

Overview of this book

If you want to take advantage of the real power of Boost and C++ and avoid the confusion about which library to use in which situation, then this book is for you. Beginning with the basics of Boost C++, you will move on to learn how the Boost libraries simplify application development. You will learn to convert data such as string to numbers, numbers to string, numbers to numbers and more. Managing resources will become a piece of cake. You’ll see what kind of work can be done at compile time and what Boost containers can do. You will learn everything for the development of high quality fast and portable applications. Write a program once and then you can use it on Linux, Windows, MacOS, Android operating systems. From manipulating images to graphs, directories, timers, files, networking – everyone will find an interesting topic. Be sure that knowledge from this book won’t get outdated, as more and more Boost libraries become part of the C++ Standard.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Writing and using plugins


Here's a tricky question: we want to allow users to write extensions to the functionality of our program, but we do not want to give them the source codes. In other words we'd like to say, "Write a function X and pack it into a shared library. We may use your function along with functions of some other users!"

Note

You meet this technique in everyday life: your browser uses it to allow third-party plugins, your text editor may use it for syntax highlighting, games use dynamic library loading for downloadable content (DLCs) and for adding gamer's content, web pages are returned by servers that use modules/plugins for encryption/authentication and so forth.

What are the requirements for a user's function and how can we use that function at some point without linking it to the shared library?

Getting ready

Basic knowledge of C++ is required for this recipe. Reading the The portable way to export and import functions and classes from Chapter 10 is a requirement.

How to do...