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C++ callbacks to member functions

How to properly do callbacks to C++ member functions is something that has intrigued me for some time now.  There are a number of solutions, none of which I really liked.  But now with the std::tr1::function and std::tr1::bind functions, there appears to be a clean solution.

In the past, if you wanted a callback to a C++ member function a typical approach was to create a static function wrapper as described here.  However, this is ugly, and a step backwards from the capabilities of plain old C.

std::tr1::function is a function wrapper that can be used to create function objects for a number of scenarios.  We are interested in representing class member functions.

#include <tr1/functional>

struct X {
	int foo(int);
};

std::tr1::function<int (X*, int)> f;

f = &X::foo;

X x;
f(&x, 6);

f() is now a simple function representation that can be passed around, etc.  However, what we don’t like is the reference to the struct X type, which makes it much less generic.  This is where the std::tr1::bind function comes in.  With bind, we can dynamically bind one function to another, and re-arrange the arguments, etc.  So to make a generic portable function that points to X::foo(), we can do something like the following.

#include <tr1/functional>

struct X {
	int foo(int);
};

std::tr1::function<int (int)> f;

X x;
f = std::tr1::bind(&X::foo, &x, _1);

f(6);

Now, f() is a very generic function that could be used in various interfaces without specifically referencing struct X.

A more complete example of how callbacks might work is given below:

#include <iostream>
#include <tr1/functional> 

struct B
{
  std::tr1::function <void ()> _callback;

  void reg_callback(std::tr1::function <void ()> callback)
  {
    _callback = callback;
  }

  void unreg_callback()
  {
    _callback = NULL;
  }

  void process() {
    // simply calls callback
    if (_callback)
      _callback();
  }
};

struct A
{
  B * _b;

  A(B * b) :
    _b(b)
  {
    std::tr1::function<void()> callback;
    callback = std::tr1::bind(&A::callback, this);
    b->reg_callback(callback);
  }

  ~A()
  {
    _b->unreg_callback();
  }

  void callback() {
    std::cout << "A::callback called\n";
  }

  void process() {
    _b->process();
  }
}; 

int main()
{
  B * b = new B();
  A * a = new A(b); 

  // the following is example where object b calls
  // back into a method
  // in object a
  a->process();

  // now delete object a, and verify the callback
  // in B does not crash or still get called
  delete a;

  // now b should not execute the callback
  b->process();
}

In the above example, the callback in the object a will be called once.

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