Creating an ImageManager class

[loogie]

Hi, I'm very new to c++ and c, and i'm attempting to make an image manager, preferably something that has static functions to retrieve the objects saved in it from any class...

(ie, you can call ImageManager::loadAsset() from the main function, and also ImageManager::getImage() from a sprite class to load the image instance...)

I understand that to make a "Static Class" you can place the constructor as private, but I'm having trouble retrieving the sf::Image to get an instance of the image loaded... here is a very simple example i'm trying.

Code: [Select]


#include <SFML/Graphics.hpp>

class ImageManager {
public:
   
    static const sf::Image& getImage();
protected:
   
private:
    ImageManager();
    virtual ~ImageManager();
    static sf::Image image;
};


and

Code: [Select]


#include "ImageManager.h"

ImageManager::ImageManager() {
}

ImageManager::~ImageManager() {
}

const sf::Image& ImageManager::getImage()
{
    sf::Image img;
    img.LoadFromFile("zeldatest.png");
   
    ImageManager::image = img;
   
    return ImageManager::image;
}


this gets the error

"ImageManager.cpp:21: undefined reference to `ImageManager::image'" but i have no idea how o fix it..  any insight in how to deal with static classes and properties etc would be greatly appreciated!

[Laurent]

That's a very basic C++ rule. Any tutorial/book/documentation/blog will give you the solution
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=c%2B%2B+static+member

[tobybear]

there are also several resource and image managers on the wiki/projects section of this site that you might check for reference .