Chapter 19. Boost.Signals2

Douglas Gregor

Frank Mori Hess

Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)

Table of Contents

Introduction

Signals2

Tutorial

How to Read this Tutorial
Hello, World! (Beginner)
Calling Multiple Slots
Passing Values to and from Slots
Connection Management
Example: Document-View
Giving a Slot Access to its Connection (Advanced)
Changing the Mutex Type of a Signal (Advanced).
Linking against the Signals2 library

Example programs

Miscellaneous Tutorial Examples
Document-View
Postconstructors and Predestructors with deconstruct()

Reference

Header <boost/signals2.hpp>
Header <boost/signals2/connection.hpp>
Header <boost/signals2/deconstruct.hpp>
Header <boost/signals2/dummy_mutex.hpp>
Header <boost/signals2/last_value.hpp>
Header <boost/signals2/mutex.hpp>
Header <boost/signals2/optional_last_value.hpp>
Header <boost/signals2/shared_connection_block.hpp>
Header <boost/signals2/signal.hpp>
Header <boost/signals2/signal_base.hpp>
Header <boost/signals2/signal_type.hpp>
Header <boost/signals2/slot.hpp>
Header <boost/signals2/slot_base.hpp>
Header <boost/signals2/trackable.hpp>

Thread-Safety

Introduction
Signals and combiners
Connections and other classes

Frequently Asked Questions

Design Rationale

User-level Connection Management
Automatic Connection Management
optional_last_value as the Default Combiner
Combiner Interface
Connection Interfaces: += operator
Signals2 Mutex Classes
Comparison with other Signal/Slot implementations

Signals2 API Changes

Porting from Boost.Signals to Boost.Signals2
Signals2 API Development

Testsuite

Acceptance tests

Introduction

Signals2

The Boost.Signals2 library is an implementation of a managed signals and slots system. Signals represent callbacks with multiple targets, and are also called publishers or events in similar systems. Signals are connected to some set of slots, which are callback receivers (also called event targets or subscribers), which are called when the signal is "emitted."

Signals and slots are managed, in that signals and slots (or, more properly, objects that occur as part of the slots) can track connections and are capable of automatically disconnecting signal/slot connections when either is destroyed. This enables the user to make signal/slot connections without expending a great effort to manage the lifetimes of those connections with regard to the lifetimes of all objects involved.

When signals are connected to multiple slots, there is a question regarding the relationship between the return values of the slots and the return value of the signals. Boost.Signals2 allows the user to specify the manner in which multiple return values are combined.

Signals2

This documentation describes a thread-safe variant of the original Boost.Signals library. There have been some changes to the interface to support thread-safety, mostly with respect to automatic connection management. This implementation was written by Frank Mori Hess. Acknowledgements are also due to Timmo Stange, Peter Dimov, and Gottlob Frege for ideas and feedback, and to Douglas Gregor for the original version of Boost.Signals this effort was based on.

Boost C++ Libraries