Revision history [back]

If you are sure that the shapeshifter contains a message with a std_msgs::Header, you can try temporarily morphing the shapeshifter into a Header and then instantiating it. This is essentially the same as always serializing it, but because you don't have to have raw uint8_t buffers floating around, it may be more understandable:

ros::Time readStamp(
    const topic_tools::ShapeShifter::ConstPtr& shapeshifter) {
    topic_tools::ShapeShifter* ss_tmp =
        const_cast<topic_tools::ShapeShifter*>(shapeshifter.get());
    auto md5sum = ss_tmp->getMD5Sum();
    auto datatype = ss_tmp->getDataType();
    auto msgdef = ss_tmp->getMessageDefinition();
    ss_tmp->morph(ros::message_traits::md5sum<std_msgs::Header>(),
                  ros::message_traits::datatype<std_msgs::Header>(), "",
                  "");
    auto tmp = ss_tmp->instantiate<std_msgs::Header>();
    ss_tmp->morph(md5sum, datatype, msgdef, "");

    return tmp->stamp;
}

Please note that if you make a copy of ShapeShifter then your code will crash. This is because the ShapeShifter class has a pointer free in its destructor but it does not have a deep copy constructor. So, copying it will result in a double pointer free bug when both instances go out of scope.