Dynamic serialization of objects with lists or pointers as members

From:
"Manuel M" <manuel.matias@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.vc.mfc
Date:
1 Sep 2006 09:05:48 -0700
Message-ID:
<1157126747.950836.78500@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>
I need to serialize objects of several (or even many)
different classes, all of those derived from a common
ABC (Abstract Base Class). The problem is that some of
those classes have arrays as members.

It goes like this: first comes the Abstract Base Class:

/////////////////////

class CFoo : public CObject
{
public:
    CFoo();
    DECLARE_SERIAL(CFoo)
    virtual ~CFoo();

    virtual void DoThis() = 0;
    virtual UINT DoThat() = 0;

}

///////////////////////// here come derived classes:

Class CFoo_A : public CFoo // this is the troublesome one
{
public:
    CFoo_A();
    DECLARE_DYNCREATE(CFoo_A)
    ~CFoo_A();

    void DoThis();
    UINT DoThat();

protected:
    CArray<CPoint, CPoint> m_pointArray; // ** POINTER HERE! **
}

///////////////////////////

Class CFoo_B : public CFoo // This one should be no problem
{
public:
    CFoo_B();
    DECLARE_DYNCREATE(CFoo_B)
    ~CFoo_B();

    void DoThis();
    UINT DoThat();

protected:
    CPoint m_pointCenter // center of a circumference
    UINT m_uRadius // radius in pixels
}

////////////////////////////

Class CFoo_C : public CFoo {...} // and so forth

I certainly don't want to have to store an identifier (string?)
for each CFoo_* object when serializing. The deserialization
would then be a long else-if chain, and that would give me some
headaches when adding new CFoo_* classes in future versions.

I have taken a close look at the examples on dynamic serialization
found on MSDN, but I haven't found one that covers dynamic
creation of objects that include arrays, lists, tables, etc, as
members.

Any hints about how I should manage this?

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