Boost - Use enum in parameters boost::program_options

options, class enum, Program, Boost

A small addition to the article on the use of boost::program_options .

In this appendix I will describe how to use enum enums. Because immediately they do not work. By default, boost::program_options work only with basic types and some types from the standard library, for example std::string .

Suppose we have a class that contains an enum .

class Logger
{
public:
    explicit Logger();

    enum VerboseLevel
    {
        E_DEBUG = 0
        E_INFO,
        E_WARNING,
        E_CRITICAL,
    };
};

It is logical that we would like to use this enumeration in the command line menu to set the level of detail of the output in the console or in a file for example.

That is, we want to configure our boost::program_options like this.

m_desc.add_options()
        (MENU_ITEM_HELP.c_str(), "produce help message")
    ("level",
     po::value<Logger::VerboseLevel>(&m_verboseLevel)->default_value(Logger::E_WARNING), 
     "set verbose level of logging, default level is Info\nLevels: \n0) Debug \n1) Info \n2) Warning \n3) Critical")
        ;
po::store(po::parse_command_line(argc, argv, m_desc), m_vm);  
po::notify(m_vm);

But when building we get an error

Error C2338 Target type is neither std::istream`able nor std::wistream`able

In this case, we need to do an overload on operator>> in order to be able to set the values we need.

The simplest option might look like this.

std::istream& operator>>(std::istream& in, Logger::VerboseLevel& verboseLevel)
{
    std::string token;
    in >> token;
    if (token == "0")
        verboseLevel = Logger::VerboseLevel::E_DEBUG;
    else if (token == "1")
        verboseLevel = Logger::VerboseLevel::E_INFO;
    else if (token == "2")
        verboseLevel = Logger::VerboseLevel::E_WARNING;
    else if (token == "3")
        verboseLevel = Logger::VerboseLevel::E_CRITICAL;
    else
        in.setstate(std::ios_base::failbit);
    return in;
}