How to detect existence of a class using SFINAE?

Question

Is it possible to detect if a class exists in C++ using SFINAE? If possible then how?

Suppose we have a class that is provided only by some versions of a library. I'd like to know if it is possible to use SFINAE to detect whether the class exists or not. The result of detection is arbitrary, say an enum constant which is 1 if it exists, 0 otherwise.

Answer 1

If we ask the compiler to tell us anything about a class type T that has not even been declared we are bound to get a compilation error. There is no way around that. Therefore if we want to know whether class T "exists", where T might not even have been declared yet, we must declare T first.

But that is OK, because merely declaring T will not make it "exist", since what we must mean by T exists is T is defined. And if, having declared T, you can then determine whether it is already defined, you need not be in any confusion.

So the problem is to determine whether T is a defined class type.

sizeof(T) is no help here. If T is undefined then it will give an incomplete type T error. Likewise typeid(T). Nor is it any good crafting an SFINAE probe on the type T *, because T * is a defined type as long as T has been declared, even if T isn't. And since we are obliged to have a declaration of class T, std::is_class<T> is not the answer either, because that declaration will suffice for it to say "Yes".

C++11 provides std::is_constructible<T ...Args> in <type_traits>. Can this offer an off-the-peg solution? - given that if T is defined, then it must have at least one constructor.

I'm afraid not. If you know the signature of at least one public constructor of T then GCC's <type_traits> (as of 4.6.3) will indeed do the business. Say that one known public constructor is T::T(int). Then:

std::is_constructible<T,int>::value

will be true if T is defined and false if T is merely declared.

But this isn't portable. <type_traits> in VC++ 2010 doesn't yet provide std::is_constructible and even its std::has_trivial_constructor<T> will barf if T is not defined: most likely when std::is_constructible does arrive it will follow suit. Furthermore, in the eventuality that only private constructors of T exist for offering to std::is_constructible then even GCC will barf (which is eyebrow raising).

If T is defined, it must have a destructor, and only one destructor. And that destructor is likelier to be public than any other possible member of T. In that light, the simplest and strongest play we can make is to craft an SFINAE probe for the existence of T::~T.

This SFINAE probe cannot be crafted in the routine way for determining whether T has an ordinary member function mf - making the "Yes overload" of the SFINAE probe function takes an argument that is defined in terms of the type of &T::mf. Because we're not allowed to take the address of a destructor (or constructor).

Nevertheless, if T is defined, then T::~T has a type DT- which must be yielded by decltype(dt) whenever dt is an expression that evaluates to an invocation of T::~T; and therefore DT * will be a type also, that can in principle be given as the argument type of a function overload. Therefore we can write the probe like this (GCC 4.6.3):

#ifndef HAS_DESTRUCTOR_H
#define HAS_DESTRUCTOR_H

#include <type_traits>

/*! The template `has_destructor<T>` exports a
    boolean constant `value that is true iff `T` has 
    a public destructor.

    N.B. A compile error will occur if T has non-public destructor.
*/ 
template< typename T>
struct has_destructor
{   
    /* Has destructor :) */
    template <typename A> 
    static std::true_type test(decltype(std::declval<A>().~A()) *) {
        return std::true_type();
    }

    /* Has no destructor :( */
    template<typename A>
    static std::false_type test(...) {
        return std::false_type(); 
    }

    /* This will be either `std::true_type` or `std::false_type` */
    typedef decltype(test<T>(0)) type;

    static const bool value = type::value; /* Which is it? */
};

#endif // EOF

with only the restriction that T must have a public destructor to be legally invoked in the argument expression of decltype(std::declval<A>().~A()). (has_destructor<T> is a simplified adaptation of the method-introspecting template I contributed here.)

The meaning of that argument expression std::declval<A>().~A() may be obscure to some, specifically std::declval<A>(). The function template std::declval<T>() is defined in <type_traits> and returns a T&& (rvalue-reference to T) - although it may only be invoked in unevaluated contexts, such as the argument of decltype. So the meaning of std::declval<A>().~A() is a call to ~A() upon some given A. std::declval<A>() serves us well here by obviating the need for there to be any public constructor of T, or for us to know about it.

Accordingly, the argument type of the SFINAE probe for the "Yes overload" is: pointer to the type of the destructor of A, and test<T>(0) will match that overload just in case there is such a type as destructor of A, for A = T.

With has_destructor<T> in hand - and its limitation to publicly destructible values of T firmly in mind - you can test whether a class T is defined at some point in your code by ensuring that you declare it before asking the question. Here is a test program.

#include "has_destructor.h"
#include <iostream>

class bar {}; // Defined
template< 
    class CharT, 
    class Traits
> class basic_iostream; //Defined
template<typename T>
struct vector; //Undefined
class foo; // Undefined

int main()
{
    std::cout << has_destructor<bar>::value << std::endl;
    std::cout << has_destructor<std::basic_iostream<char>>::value 
        << std::endl;
    std::cout << has_destructor<foo>::value << std::endl;
    std::cout << has_destructor<vector<int>>::value << std::endl;
    std::cout << has_destructor<int>::value << std::endl;
    std::count << std::has_trivial_destructor<int>::value << std::endl;
    return 0;
}

Built with GCC 4.6.3, this will tell you that the 2 // Defined classes have destructors and the 2 // Undefined classes do not. The fifth line of output will say that int is destructible, and the final line will show that std::has_trivial_destructor<int> agrees. If we want to narrow the field to class types, std::is_class<T> can be applied after we determine that T is destructible.

Visual C++ 2010 does not provide std::declval(). To support that compiler you can add the following at the top of has_destructor.h:

#ifdef _MSC_VER
namespace std {
template <typename T>
typename add_rvalue_reference<T>::type declval();
}
#endif