Say you have a point class, representing a two dimensional location:

class point
{
    int x;
    int y;
public:
    point() : x(0), y(0) {}
    point(int x, int y) : x(x), y(y) {}

    bool operator==(point const& other) const
    {
        return x == other.x && y == other.y;
    }
};

and you wish to use it as the key for an unordered_map. You need to customise the hash for this structure. To do this we need to combine the hash values for x and y. The function boost::hash_combine is supplied for this purpose:

class point
{
    ...

    friend std::size_t hash_value(point const& p)
    {
        std::size_t seed = 0;
        boost::hash_combine(seed, p.x);
        boost::hash_combine(seed, p.y);

        return seed;
    }

    ...
};

Calls to hash_combine incrementally build the hash from the different members of point, it can be repeatedly called for any number of elements. It calls hash_value on the supplied element, and combines it with the seed.

Full code for this example is at /libs/functional/hash/examples/point.cpp.

Note

When using boost::hash_combine the order of the calls matters. std::size_t seed = 0; boost::hash_combine(seed, 1); boost::hash_combine(seed, 2); results in a different seed to: std::size_t seed = 0; boost::hash_combine(seed, 2); boost::hash_combine(seed, 1); If you are calculating a hash value for data where the order of the data doesn't matter in comparisons (e.g. a set) you will have to ensure that the data is always supplied in the same order.

To calculate the hash of an iterator range you can use boost::hash_range:

std::vector<std::string> some_strings;
std::size_t hash = boost::hash_range(some_strings.begin(), some_strings.end());

Note that when writing template classes, you might not want to include the main hash header as it's quite an expensive include that brings in a lot of other headers, so instead you can include the <boost/functional/hash_fwd.hpp> header which forward declares boost::hash, boost::hash_range and boost::hash_combine. You'll need to include the main header before instantiating boost::hash. When using a container that uses boost::hash it should do that for you, so your type will work fine with the boost hash containers. There's an example of this in template.hpp and template.cpp.