The type in a dynamic_cast must be a pointer or reference to a complete class type, or void *

Question

I am hoping there is someone out there who understands why the code below fails. I am trying to get an instance of PositionAttitudeTransform (Openscenegraph class) from an osg::Node* node object. But there is the compiler error below in bold.

 void CameraPosCallbackUpdate::operator()(osg::Node* node, osg::NodeVisitor* nv)
{ 
   // other code goes here

    osg::PositionAttitudeTransform* pat = dynamic_cast<osg::PositionAttitudeTransform*> (node);

}

IntelliSense: the type in a dynamic_cast must be a pointer or reference to a complete class type, or void *

Please help me with correct way to access my object and I would appreciate help in understanding what the problem here is since I believe the cast should be possible.

http://www.openscenegraph.org/documentation/OpenSceneGraphReferenceDocs/a00529.html

Niggle

You need to show the declaration of node. As the error message says, it should be a pointer or reference to a complete type. – Constant

code updated with more detail on where node is coming from. – Niggle

Is the type, in fact, complete? Is a definition for it visible from here? – Hillard

As compiler said to you you have not included osg::PositionAttitudeTransform implementation – Agitprop

Answer 1

I believe you have to #include the header file which contains the body of class osg::PositionAttitudeTransform.
dynamic_cast gives such error when the body of the destination class is not visible.

Here is the similar error reproduced in g++.

Thiourea

Thank you. I had to remove the #include <osg/Transform> and replaced it with #include <osg/PositionAttitudeTransform>. – Niggle