how to access the instantiation of my component? Options

[vroomvroom]

Hi all,

Please bear with me while I ask a possibly dumb question. How do I access the instantiated object of my component? Let's say I'm creating two ui_elements, A and B. I would like A to be able to call B's public functions, without making B's public functions static. In order to do this, A would need access to B's instantiation but I'm unable to figure out how.

For example, taking the SDK's foo_sample's ui_element.cpp:

CODE

class CMyElemWindow : public ui_element_instance, public CWindowImpl<CMyElemWindow> {
...
}

// ui_element_impl_withpopup autogenerates standalone version of our component and proper menu commands. Use ui_element_impl instead if you don't want that.
class ui_element_myimpl : public ui_element_impl_withpopup<CMyElemWindow> {};

static service_factory_single_t<ui_element_myimpl> g_ui_element_myimpl_factory;

It seems that the last two lines have to do with the instantiation of my class, but I'm unable to figure out how to get access to this instantiation.

I realize I could (or should) just create a single ui_element instead of two, but having two separate ui_elements allows me to arrange them in different spots within foobar.
Any ideas?

Many thanks in advance..

[vroomvroom]

Thanks for your response. Does it matter whether I want communication between different classes or different instances of the same class? They're still separate instances, and I do not have handles for any of them. By the way, my use case involved two different classes.

In any case, I got around the problem by doing two things: (I had multiple, not just two, classes, so I used two different solutions)
1) merge two classes into one
2) create a global variable that is a pointer to a class A, make class B a friend of class A, and use that pointer from class B (to access members in class A)

I realize 2) is kinda ugly, but it was the best I could do to keep things orderly (i.e. separate classes) while allowing "inter-class" communication.