Hi,
it would take a long time to discuss all differences, but I can give some
examples. There are basically three ways of interfacing with Python objects in
pybind11.
1. using wrapper classes like pybind11::object (analogous to
boost::python::object)
2. by creating bindings that map a C++ type to Python — this is done using
pybind11::class_ (analogous to boost::python::class_)
3. by declaring a partial template overload that does transparent conversions
between different types.
Boost.Python’s approach for communicating type information (item 2. in the
above list) between modules entails linking against a shared library with a few
containers storing the relevant data. In comparison, pybind11 installs a
__pybind11__ capsule object in the global scope for this purpose, which avoids
the library dependency. Any extra binding library that is loaded just registers
its types there.
In terms of the underlying implementation, 1. and 2. are pretty basic, and 3.
is where a lot of the interesting things happen. This is basically a big list
of partial template overloads of a class named type_caster which try to match
various common types recursively. I’ll show just one example of how C++11 can
considerably simplify implementation details here.
For instance, consider the converter which enables transparent conversions
between std::tuple<…> and Python’s ‘tuple’ class. Among other things, pybind11
uses this to convert function arguments to Python objects. The top-level
signature matches an arbitrary tuple (that could even be nested, or other kinds
of type concoctions … :)) I’ll expand the snippet literal programming-style,
adding code to the <…> part.
template <typename... Tuple> class type_caster<std::tuple<Tuple...>> {
typedef std::tuple<Tuple...> type;
enum { size = sizeof...(Tuple) };
<…>
};
The first thing we’ll do is to declare sub-converters to deal with the
individual tuple element types. The decay template simplifies the base type as
much as possible by stripping type modifiers like pointers, references, const,
etc. (those are handled separately)
<…> +=
std::tuple<type_caster<typename decay<Tuple>::type>...> value;
The following function takes a tuple from Python and converts it into the
corresponding C++ object, returning false if the conversion wasn’t possible. It
expects a special type index_sequence<0,1,2,3,…., N-1> as an argument, where N
is the length of the tuple. This is a pretty common workaround to enable
something resembling a loop over variadic template arguments rather than
writing a messy recursive function.
<…> +=
protected:
template <size_t ... Indices> bool load(PyObject *src,
index_sequence<Indices...>) {
if (!PyTuple_Check(src))
return false;
if (PyTuple_Size(src) != size)
return false;
std::array<bool, size> results {{
(PyTuple_GET_ITEM(src, Indices) != nullptr ?
std::get<Indices>(value).load(PyTuple_GET_ITEM(src, Indices)) : false)...
}};
for (bool r : results)
if (!r)
return false;
return true;
}
The following function function calls the above protected function with the
needed index_sequence
<…> +=
public:
bool load(PyObject *src) {
return load(src, typename
make_index_sequence<sizeof...(Tuple)>::type());
}
which is constructed using a much shorter recursive implementation that runs at
compile time:
template<size_t ...> struct index_sequence { };
template<size_t N, size_t ...S> struct make_index_sequence :
make_index_sequence <N - 1, N - 1, S...> { };
template<size_t ...S> struct make_index_sequence <0, S...> { typedef
index_sequence<S...> type; };
Here is another very short example that I like: this converts a Python function
into a std::function<> using a stateful lambda closure that invokes the
function object’s call() function.
With this partial template overload, we can easily call functions that take
std::function<>s as argument using Python functions. Something similar is also
possible for the reverse direction.
template <typename Return, typename... Args> struct
type_caster<std::function<Return(Args...)>> {
typedef std::function<Return(Args...)> type;
public:
bool load(PyObject *src_) {
if (!PyFunction_Check(src_))
return false;
object src(src_, true);
value = [src](Args... args) -> Return {
object retval(handle(src).call(std::move(args)...));
return retval.template cast<Return>();
};
return true;
}
<…>
protected:
type value;
}.
The codebase contains many other examples. For instance, the optional
auto-vectorization support over NumPy array arguments is something that would
have been very painful to do with C++03.
Best,
Wenzel
> On Oct 19, 2015, at 2:15 PM, Jim Bosch <tallji...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> At first glance, this looks great. I've been tinkering with something like
> this for a while now, but it's never amounted to anything more than a C++11
> learning project, and this looks quite solid in comparison.
>
> It may be a long time before I get a chance to evaluate pybind11 for use in
> my own projects, but as a prelude to that I was wondering if you could say
> anything about support for custom converters and cross-module type
> conversion, which I didn't see mentioned in the docs (though I just skimmed
> them). Are you using the same sort of global registry Boost.Python used? If
> so, I'm curious how that works with a header-only library.
>
> Jim
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 18, 2015 at 9:56 PM, Wenzel Jakob <wen...@inf.ethz.ch
> <mailto:wen...@inf.ethz.ch>> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> after being a long-time Boost.Python user, I’ve been working on an
> alternative that makes more effective use of recent C++11-capable compilers.
> The overall syntax and ideology are very similar to Boost.Python, but the
> implementation only requires a few header files with a a vastly smaller
> amount of code thanks to C++11 lambda functions, tuples and variadic
> templates. There is also dedicated support for Python’s buffer protocol and
> NumPy arrays, which is useful for scientific computing applications.
>
> So far it’s only used by a few projects, but I think it could be useful to
> this audience.
>
> Code: https://github.com/wjakob/pybind11 <https://github.com/wjakob/pybind11>
> Documentation: http://pybind11.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
> <http://pybind11.readthedocs.org/en/latest/>
>
> Best,
> Wenzel
>
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