map set/get requests into C++ class/structure changes

Solution 1:

Boost has Property Maps for this purpose.

• http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_57_0/libs/property_map/doc/property_map.html

The most elementary interface it exposes is

get(map, key)
put(pmap, key, val)

For lvalue/readable maps you can also get indexer style access

pmap[key];
pmap[key] = newval; // if not const/readonly

You can a existing property map adaptors:

• identity_property_map and typed_identity_property_map
• function_property_map
• iterator_property_map
• shared_array_property_map
• associative_property_map
• const_associative_property_map
• vector_property_map
• ref_property_map
• static_property_map
• transform_value_property_map
• compose_property_map

or write custom ones.

There is even a dynamic_property_map that looks like this, in practice:

put("age",properties,fred,new_age);
put("gpa",properties,fred,new_gpa);

Note that age and gpa could be stored anywhere (even requiring a web-request, perhaps) but the difference in access is abstracted away by the properymap interface that sits in between.

Samples from my answers:

• Is it possible to have several edge weight property maps for one graph BOOST?
• Cut set of a graph, Boost Graph Library using a BiMap and a Boost Multi Index container to store the properties