[Development] RFC: new moc feature

[Sean Harmer]

Hi devs,

I'd like to get some feedback on a new feature for moc before we take it 
any further than mild musing. The context is Qt3D has some frontend 
QObject subclass types, and corresponding backend, non-QObject subclass 
types for reasons of allowing us to process data on the backend without 
blocking the main thread or locking it.

To get the property values from the frontend objects to the backend we 
wrap the data up in QScenePropertyChange and in the backend object we 
unpack the data and handle it with code something like this:

     if (e->type() == NodeUpdated) {
         const QScenePropertyChangePtr &propertyChange = 
qSharedPointerCast<QScenePropertyChange>(e);
         if (propertyChange->propertyName() == 
QByteArrayLiteral("scale3D")) {
             m_scale = propertyChange->value().value<QVector3D>();
             updateMatrix();
         } else if (propertyChange->propertyName() == 
QByteArrayLiteral("rotation")) {
             m_rotation = propertyChange->value().value<QQuaternion>();
             updateMatrix();
         } else if (propertyChange->propertyName() == 
QByteArrayLiteral("translation")) {
             m_translation = propertyChange->value().value<QVector3D>();
             updateMatrix();
         } else if (propertyChange->propertyName() == 
QByteArrayLiteral("enabled")) {
             m_enabled = propertyChange->value().toBool();
         }
     }

Not too bad in this case but those cascaded if-else if blocks are not 
good when the number of properties is large.

This is where the proposed new feature of moc would come in. If moc were 
able to generate an enum where each enum value corresponds to a static 
property we would be able to use a switch in the above code.

Is such a feature feasible? Are there reasons why it couldn't work?

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Cheers,

Sean

-- 
Dr Sean Harmer | sean.harmer at kdab.com | Managing Director UK
KDAB (UK) Ltd, a KDAB Group company
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