forward declaration with vector of class type - pointer to incomplete class type not allowed

Question

I have two classes, foo and bar.

foo.h #includes bar.h and contains a std::vector of pointers to bar objects. At some point during runtime, bar has to access this vector of pointers to other bar objects. Therefore, foo contains a method named getBarObjects() that returns the array of pointers.

Therefore, I forward declare foo in bar.h. I obviously also have to forward declare the method I'm using - foo::getBarObjects(). As this returns the array of pointers to bar, I get into a vicious cycle.

I cannot forward declare Bar and then simply forward declare getBarObjects(), as this results in "incomplete type name is not allowed".

foo.h:

#include "bar.h"
#include <vector>

class foo {
    public:
         foo();
         ~foo();
         std::vector<bar*> getBarObjects();
    private:
         std::vector<bar*> barObjects;
}

bar.h:

class foo;
std::vector<bar*> foo::getBarObjects();        // error, doesn't know bar at this point

class bar {
    public:
        bar(foo *currentFoo);
        ~bar();
        bool dosth();
    private:
        foo *thisFoo;
}

bar.cpp:

#include "bar.h"

bool bar(foo *currentFoo) {
    thisFoo = currentFoo;
}

bool bar::dosth() {
    thisFoo->getBarObjects();        // error, pointer to inomplete class type is not allowed
}

If I simply include the other way around, I'll have just the same problem in foo later on. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You can't forward declare members.

Instead, bar.cpp should #include both foo.h and bar.h. Problem solved.

In general, if you use the sequence:

• Forward declare all class types
• Define all class types
• Bodies of class members

everything will be fine.