Re: Serialization

Larry Evans <cppljevans@suddenlink.net> writes:


Yes it does look very nice, but the problem is that I can't really use
it.
Or well I can use it for testing and other things but in "production" I
must be able to disable it, and then it's a bit problematic.

I'm not expert in this field at all, I'm looking around and what I only
need is just for example

- take a std::vector<string> var;
- write it in a portable manner
- send and reconstruct

So now suppose that
coord_t = int
and
stream_t = char

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
For one of the types I did this
Stream PadCoordinate::toStream()
{
    // the stream should also accept a vector of something else
    // or a generic iterator, to make life easier to the other part of the code
    vector<stream_t> vec;
    for (size_t i=0; i < coord.size(); ++i) {
        vec.push_back((stream_t) coord[i]);
    }
    Stream st(vec);
    return st;
}

// maybe this conversion is not really a good idea
PadCoordinate PadCoordinate::parseStream(const Stream& raw)
{
    // instead of pushing I have to set the values!!
    PadCoordinate pc;
    for (int i=0; i < raw.getSize(); ++i) {
        pc.coord[i] = (coord_t) raw[i];
    }
    return pc;
}
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

where Stream is this thing in the end

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
class Stream
{
private:
    bool stream_is_const;
    std::vector<stream_t> stream;
    void setStream(stream_t *buf, const int);
    ...
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

because in the end the data to the other layers must go in
(char *buffer, int *size) format.

But here it was easy since it's easily convertible (even if probably
wrong already since int is much larger).

But what if I have a bigger type?
Does it make sense to use the vector of chars there at all?

Any example of a simple serialization in c++?