=========
C++ union
=========

------------
Introduction
------------

`Boost.Python`_ does not help you to expose a variable, which has a union type.
In this document, I am going to show you a complete example how to get access
to the data, stored in the variable.

:doc:`Py++ <../../pyplusplus>` will not expose a union - it is impossible using `Boost.Python`_,
instead it will expose the address of the variable and the rest is done from the
`Python`_ using `ctypes`_ package.

--------
Example
--------

For this example I am going to use the following code:

  .. code-block:: c++

    struct data_t{
        union actual_data_t{
            int i;
            double d;
        };
        actual_data_t data;
    };

As in many other cases, :doc:`Py++ <../../pyplusplus>` does the job automatically:

  .. code-block:: python

    mb = module_builder_t( ... )
    mb.class_( 'data_t' ).include()

no special code, to achieve the desired result, was written.

The generated code is boring, so I will skip it and will continue to the usage
example:

  .. code-block:: python

    import ctypes
    from <<<your module>>> import data_t

    #lets define our union
    class actual_data_t( ctypes.Union ):
        _fields_ = [( "i", ctypes.c_int ), ( 'd', ctypes.c_double )]

    obj = data_t()
    actual_data = actual_data_t.from_address( obj.data )
    #you can set\get data
    actual_data.i = 18
    prit actual_data.i
    actual_data.d = 12.12
    print actual_data.d

That's all. Everything should work fine. You can add few getters and setters to
class ``data_t``, so you could verify the results. I did this for a tester, that
checks this functionality.

.. _`ctypes` : http://docs.python.org/lib/module-ctypes.html
.. _`from_address` : http://docs.python.org/lib/ctypes-data-types.html
.. _`Boost.Python`: http://www.boost.org/libs/python/doc/index.html
.. _`Python`: http://www.python.org
.. _`GCC-XML`: http://www.gccxml.org

