Extension methods in c++

Question

I was searching for an implementation of extension methods in c++ and came upon this comp.std.c++ discussion which mentions that polymorphic_map can be used to

Answer 1

To elaborate more on @Akira answer, operator| can be used to extend existing classes with functions that take parameters too. Here an example that I'm using to extend Xerces XML library with find functionalities that can be easily concatenated:

#pragma once

#include 
#include 

#include 

#define _U16C // macro that converts string to char16_t array

XERCES_CPP_NAMESPACE_BEGIN
    struct FindFirst
    {
        FindFirst(const std::string& name);
        DOMElement * operator()(const DOMElement &el) const;
        DOMElement * operator()(const DOMElement *el) const;
    private:
        std::string m_name;
    };

    struct FindFirstExisting
    {
        FindFirstExisting(const std::string& name);
        DOMElement & operator()(const DOMElement &el) const;
    private:
        std::string m_name;
    };

    inline DOMElement & operator|(const DOMElement &el, const FindFirstExisting &f)
    {
        return f(el);
    }

    inline DOMElement * operator|(const DOMElement &el, const FindFirst &f)
    {
        return f(el);
    }

    inline DOMElement * operator|(const DOMElement *el, const FindFirst &f)
    {
        return f(el);
    }

    inline FindFirst::FindFirst(const std::string & name)
        : m_name(name)
    {
    }

    inline DOMElement * FindFirst::operator()(const DOMElement &el) const
    {
        auto list = el.getElementsByTagName(_U16C(m_name));
        if (list->getLength() == 0)
            return nullptr;

        return static_cast(list->item(0));
    }

    inline DOMElement * FindFirst::operator()(const DOMElement *el) const
    {
        if (el == nullptr)
            return nullptr;

        auto list = el->getElementsByTagName(_U16C(m_name));
        if (list->getLength() == 0)
            return nullptr;

        return static_cast(list->item(0));
    }

    inline FindFirstExisting::FindFirstExisting(const std::string & name)
        : m_name(name)
    {
    }

    inline DOMElement & FindFirstExisting::operator()(const DOMElement & el) const
    {
        auto list = el.getElementsByTagName(_U16C(m_name));
        if (list->getLength() == 0)
            throw runtime_error(string("Missing element with name ") + m_name);

        return static_cast(*list->item(0));
    }

XERCES_CPP_NAMESPACE_END

It can be used this way:

auto packetRate = *elementRoot | FindFirst("Header") | FindFirst("PacketRate");
auto &decrypted = *elementRoot | FindFirstExisting("Header") | FindFirstExisting("Decrypted");