Finding the type of an object in C++

I have a class A and another class that inherits from it, B. I am overriding a function that accepts an object of type A as a parameter, so I have to accept an A. However, I later call functions that only B has, so I want to return false and not proceed if the object passed is not of type B.

What is the best way to find out which type the object passed to my function is?

Solution 1:

dynamic_cast should do the trick

TYPE& dynamic_cast<TYPE&> (object);
TYPE* dynamic_cast<TYPE*> (object);

The dynamic_cast keyword casts a datum from one pointer or reference type to another, performing a runtime check to ensure the validity of the cast.

If you attempt to cast to pointer to a type that is not a type of actual object, the result of the cast will be NULL. If you attempt to cast to reference to a type that is not a type of actual object, the cast will throw a bad_cast exception.

Make sure there is at least one virtual function in Base class to make dynamic_cast work.

Wikipedia topic Run-time type information

RTTI is available only for classes that are polymorphic, which means they have at least one virtual method. In practice, this is not a limitation because base classes must have a virtual destructor to allow objects of derived classes to perform proper cleanup if they are deleted from a base pointer.

Solution 2:

Dynamic cast is the best for your description of problem, but I just want to add that you can find the class type with:

#include <typeinfo>

...
string s = typeid(YourClass).name()

Solution 3:

This is called RTTI, but you almost surely want to reconsider your design here, because finding the type and doing special things based on it makes your code more brittle.