Meta Objects, Properties, and Reflective Programming

In this chapter we introduce the idea of reflection, the self-examination of an object's members. Using reflective programming, it becomes possible to write general-purpose operations that work on classes of varied structures. Using QVariant, a generic value-holder, we can operate on built-in types as well as other common types in a uniform way.

15.1	Anti-patterns	342
15.2	QMetaObject: The MetaObject Pattern	344
15.3	Type Identification and qobject_cast	345
15.4	Q_PROPERTY Macro: Describing QObject Properties	347
15.5	QVariant Class: Accessing Properties	350
15.6	DataObject: An Extension of QObject	353
15.7	Property Containers: PropsMap	355