invalid use of incomplete type

Question

I'm trying to use a typedef from a subclass in my project, I've isolated my problem in the example below.

Does anyone know where I'm going wrong?

template<typename Subclass>
class A {
    public:
        //Why doesn't it like this?
        void action(typename Subclass::mytype var) {
            (static_cast<Subclass*>(this))->do_action(var);
        }
};

class B : public A<B> {
    public:
        typedef int mytype;

        B() {}

        void do_action(mytype var) {
            // Do stuff
        }
};

int main(int argc, char** argv) {
    B myInstance;
    return 0;
}

This is the output I get:

sean@SEAN-PC:~/Documents/LucadeStudios/experiments$ g++ -o test test.cpp
test.cpp: In instantiation of ‘A<B>’:
test.cpp:10:   instantiated from here
test.cpp:5: error: invalid use of incomplete type ‘class B’
test.cpp:10: error: forward declaration of ‘class B’

Answer 1

The reason is that when instantiating a class template, all its declarations (not the definitions) of its member functions are instantiated too. The class template is instantiated precisely when the full definition of a specialization is required. That is the case when it is used as a base class for example, as in your case.

So what happens is that A<B> is instantiated at

class B : public A<B>

at which point B is not a complete type yet (it is after the closing brace of the class definition). However, A<B>::action's declaration requires B to be complete, because it is crawling in the scope of it:

Subclass::mytype

What you need to do is delaying the instantiation to some point at which B is complete. One way of doing this is to modify the declaration of action to make it a member template.

template<typename T>
void action(T var) {
    (static_cast<Subclass*>(this))->do_action(var);
}

It is still type-safe because if var is not of the right type, passing var to do_action will fail.

Answer 2

You can get around this by using a traits class:
It requires you set up a specialsed traits class for each actuall class you use.

template<typename SubClass>
class SubClass_traits
{};

template<typename Subclass>
class A {
    public:
        void action(typename SubClass_traits<Subclass>::mytype var)
        {
                (static_cast<Subclass*>(this))->do_action(var);
        }
};


// Definitions for B
class B;   // Forward declare

template<> // Define traits for B. So other classes can use it.
class SubClass_traits<B>
{
    public:
        typedef int mytype;
};

// Define B
class B : public A<B>
{
    // Define mytype in terms of the traits type.
    typedef SubClass_traits<B>::mytype  mytype;
    public:

        B() {}

        void do_action(mytype var) {
                // Do stuff
        }
};

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
    B myInstance;
    return 0;
}