Serializing C++ objects

Question

I would like to implement a Serialization Class which takes in an object and converts it into a binary stream and stored in a file. Later, the object should be reconstructed from a file.

Though this functionality is provided by BinaryFormatter in C#, I would like to design my own Serialization class from scratch.

Can someone point to some resources ?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I have been using boost::serialization library for a while now and I think it is very good. You just need to create the serialization code like this:

class X {
  private:
    std::string value_;
  public:
    template void serialize(Archive &ar, const unsigned int version) {
       ar & value_;
     };
 }

No need to create the de-serialization code ( that's why they used the & operator ). But if you prefer you can still use the << and >> operators.

Also it's possible to write the serialization method for a class with no modification ( ex.: if you need to serialize an object that comes from a library ). In this case, you should do something like:

namespace boost { namespace serialization {
       template
       void serialize(Archive &ar, X &x const unsigned int version) {
                    ar & x.getValue();
       };
    }}