templates - C++ std::map holding ANY type of value

Question

Basically I want MyClass that holds a Hashmap that maps Field name(string) to ANY type of Value.. For this purpose I wrote a separate MyField class that holds the type & value information..

This is what I have so far:

template <typename T>
class MyField {
    T m_Value;
    int m_Size;
}


struct MyClass {
    std::map<string, MyField> fields;   //ERROR!!!
}

But as you can see, the map declaration fails because I didn't provide the type parameter for MyField...

So I guess It has to be something like

std::map< string, MyField<int> > fields;

or

std::map< string, MyField<double> > fields;

But obviously this undermines my whole purpose, because the declared map can only hold MyField of a specific type.. I want a map that can hold ANY type of MyField clas..

Is there any way I can achieve this..?

Answer 1

This is plain in C++ 17. Use std::map + std::any + std::any_cast:

#include <map>
#include <string>
#include <any>
        
int main()
{
    std::map<std::string, std::any> notebook;

    std::string name{ "Pluto" };
    int year = 2015;

    notebook["PetName"] = name;
    notebook["Born"] = year;

    std::string name2 = std::any_cast<std::string>(notebook["PetName"]); // = "Pluto"
    int year2 = std::any_cast<int>(notebook["Born"]); // = 2015
}