You've got a good start. The right way to do this is to create custom ROS messages for both the "struct" and the "array of structs". In the ROS .msg format, an undefined-length array is defined using the int[] intArray
syntax (with no size in the array-brackets).
The specifics of how arrays are handled in ROS messages are described on this wiki page. In particular, the "array handling" section shows that variable-length arrays are interpreted as std::vector
in roscpp (C++).
As an example, see the Joint Trajectory Action tutorial. In the armExtensionTrajectory
function, the example builds up the goal.trajectory
message, which is of type JointTrajectory and contains a variable-length array of JointTrajectoryPoints. As you can see, the variable-length array is built using the usual C++ std::vector
methods (push_back
, resize
, etc.).
Here's a more specific example to address your case above (it's untested, so forgive any typos):
---------------------------------------
imgData.msg
int32 upperLeft
int32 lowerRight
string color
string cameraID
---------------------------------------
imgDataArray.msg
imgData[] images
---------------------------------------
demo_pub.cpp
ros::Publisher pub = n.advertise<my_pkg::imgDataArray>("test", 1000);
my_pkg::imgData data;
my_pkg::imgDataArray msg;
data.upperleft=0; data.lowerRight=100; data.color="red"; data.cameraID="one";
msg.images.push_back(data);
data.upperleft=1; data.lowerRight=101; data.color="blue"; data.cameraID="two";
msg.images.push_back(data);
pub.publish(msg);
---------------------------------------
demo_sub.cpp
void subCB(const my_pkg::imgDataArray::ConstPtr& msg)
{
for (int i=0; i<msg->images.size; ++i)
{
const my_pkg::imgData &data = msg->images[i];
ROS_INFO_STREAM("UL: " << data.upperleft << "UR: " << data.upperright <<
"color: " << data.color << "ID: " << data.cameraID);
}
}
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
...
ros::Subscriber sub = n.subscribe("test", 1000, subCB);
ros::spin();
}