Registration order

Introduction

“… I would very much like to pass booleans from Python to C++ and have them accepted as boils. However I cannot seem to do this. …”

“… My class has 2 “append” functions. The first one, has single argument with type “const char*”, the second one also has single argument with type “char”. It seems, that I am not able to call the first function. …”

If you have problem similar to described ones, than I am almost sure you have registration order problem.

Example

struct tester_t{
    tester_t() {}

    const char* append(const char*)
    { return "append(const char *)"; }

    const char* append(const char)
    { return "append(const char)"; }

    const char* do_smth( bool )
    { return "do_smth( bool )"; }

    const char* do_smth( int )
    { return "do_smth( int )"; }
};

Py++ generates code, that register functions in the order they appear in the source code:

namespace bp = boost::python;

BOOST_PYTHON_MODULE(my_module){
  bp::class_< tester_t >( "tester_t" )
      .def( bp::init< >() )
      .def( "append"
          , (char const * ( ::tester_t::* )( char const * ) )( &::tester_t::append ) )
      .def( "append"
          , (char const * ( ::tester_t::* )( char const ) )( &::tester_t::append ) )
      .def( "do_smth"
          , (char const * ( ::tester_t::* )( bool ) )( &::tester_t::do_smth ) )
      .def( "do_smth"
          , (char const * ( ::tester_t::* )( int ) )( &::tester_t::do_smth ) );
}

Registration order pitfalls

Do you want to guess what is the output of the following program:

import my_module
tester = my_module.tester_t()
print tester.do_smth( True )
print tester.do_smth( 10 )
print tester.append( "Hello world!" )

?

The output is:

do_smth( int )

do_smth( int )

append(const char)

Unexpected, right? The registration order of exposed overloaded functions is important. Boost.Python tries overloads in reverse order of definition.

If I understand right, Boost.Python tries to match in reverse order the overloaded functions, if it can convert Python arguments to C++ ones, it does this and calls the function.

Now, when you understand the behavior, it should be pretty simple to provide a correct functionality:

1. You can change alias of the function, by mangling the type of the argument into it:

mb = module_builder_t( ... )
for f in mb.class_( 'tester_t' ).member_functions():
    f.alias = f.alias + f.arguments[0].type.decl_string

2. You can reorder the declarations within the source file.

3. You can ask Py++ to generate code, which takes into account the order of declarations:

   from pyplusplus.creators_factory import sort_algorithms
   
   sort_algorithms.USE_CALLDEF_ORGANIZER = True
   # The functionality is available from version 0.8.3
   

4. The last and the perfect solution. Py++ will let you know, when your code has such problem. The functionality is available from version 0.8.3. After this you can change the aliases of the functions. The third step is to create small “dispatch” function in Python:

   import my_module
   
   def tester_t_do_smth( self, value ):
       if isinstance( value, bool ):
           self.do_smth_bool( value ):
       else:
           self.do_smth_int( value )
   
   tester_t.do_smth = tester_t_do_smth
   

   The technique shown here described pretty good in Boost.Python Extending Wrapped Objects in Python tutorials .

   May be in future, Py++ will generate this code for you. Anyway, if you have a lot of use cases like this consider to generate Python code and not to write it manually.