How to release pointer from boost::shared_ptr?

Question

Can boost::shared_ptr release the stored pointer without deleting it?

I can see no release function exists in the documentation, also in the FAQ is explained why it

Answer 1

I am using Poco::HTTPRequestHandlerFactory which expects to return a raw HTTPRequestHandler*, the Poco framework deletes the handler once the request finishes.

Also using DI Sauce project to create the controllers, however the Injector returns shared_ptr which I cannot return directly, and returning handler.get() is no good either since the as soon as this function returns the shared_ptr goes out of scope and deletes then handler before its executed, so here is a reasonable (I think) reason to have a .release() method. I ended up creating a HTTPRequestHandlerWrapper class as follows :-

class HTTPRequestHandlerWrapper : public HTTPRequestHandler {
private:
    sauce::shared_ptr _handler;

public:
    HTTPRequestHandlerWrapper(sauce::shared_ptr handler) {
        _handler = handler;
    }

    virtual void handleRequest(HTTPServerRequest& request, HTTPServerResponse& response) {
        return _handler->handleRequest(request, response);
    }
};

and then the factory would

HTTPRequestHandler* HttpHandlerFactory::createRequestHandler(const HTTPServerRequest& request) {
    URI uri = URI(request.getURI());
    auto path = uri.getPath();
    auto method = request.getMethod();

    sauce::shared_ptr handler = _injector->get(method + ":" + path);

    return new HTTPRequestHandlerWrapper(handler);
}

which satisfied both Sauce and Poco and works nicely.