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Name Generator        

About the Name Generator

The following class is based on a forum thread.

This class helps with giving unique names to your Ogre objects (and other objects as well).

Source Code

NameGenerator.h

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#ifndef NAME_GENERATOR_H #define NAME_GENERATOR_H #include <string> #include <cstdint> /** * \brief A utility class to generate unique names. **/ class NameGenerator { public: /** * \brief Gets the next unique name. **/ static std::string Next(); /** * \brief Gets the next unique name for a given prefix. **/ static std::string Next(const std::string& prefix); /** * \brief Counts the number of unique auto-generated names. **/ static size_t Count(); /** * \brief Counts the number of names generated for a given prefix. * \param prefix The prefix of the generated names. **/ static size_t Count(const std::string& prefix); private: NameGenerator(); ~NameGenerator(); typedef std::map<std::string, uint32_t> NameCountMap; static NameCountMap s_nameCount; }; #endif


NameGenerator.cpp

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#include <sstream> #include "NameGenerator.h" const std::string DEFAULT_NAME_PREFIX = "AutoGeneratedName"; NameGenerator::NameCountMap NameGenerator::s_nameCount; //--------------------------------------------------------------------- NameGenerator::NameGenerator() { } //--------------------------------------------------------------------- NameGenerator::~NameGenerator() { } //--------------------------------------------------------------------- std::string NameGenerator::Next() { return Next(DEFAULT_NAME_PREFIX); } //--------------------------------------------------------------------- std::string NameGenerator::Next( const std::string& prefix ) { if (s_nameCount.count(prefix) == 0) { s_nameCount[prefix] = 0; } std::stringstream ss; ss<<prefix<<"_"<<s_nameCount[prefix]++; return ss.str(); } //--------------------------------------------------------------------- size_t NameGenerator::Count() { size_t count = Count(DEFAULT_NAME_PREFIX); return count; } //--------------------------------------------------------------------- size_t NameGenerator::Count( const std::string& prefix ) { size_t count = (s_nameCount.count(prefix) == 0)?0:s_nameCount[prefix]; return count; }

Usage

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std::string autogenerated_name = NameGenerator::Next(); // Generates (from the above code) 'AutoGeneratedName_x', where x is a number std::string new_entity_name = NameGenerator::Next("Entity"); // Generates 'Entity_x', where x is a number // Usage example with Ogre: Ogre::Entity* Mass = mSceneMgr->createEntity(NameGenerator::Next("Entity"), "lightsphere.mesh");

As this class has only static functions, you don't need to create an instance of it.