simple C/C++ Serialization or deflating or Marshalling user defined data types or objects

But is it to use boost or not it is your decision :-)  It is a good lib. But I find it very handy for small in another way as below;-
// Just a simple serialization in C++
#ifndef CVARIABLELENDATA_HPP
#define CVARIABLELENDATA_HPP

#include <string>

typedef char*	BuffPtr;
typedef size_t	BuffLen;

class CVariableLenData
{
public:
	//Serilizes data members to a char buffer
	void Serialize(BuffPtr &ptr, BuffLen len, BuffLen &writelen) const;

	//DeSerilizes from a char buffer & constructs an object
	static CVariableLenData* DeSerialize(const BuffPtr ptr, BuffLen len);

	void SetData(std::string& str);
	void SetData(int& val);

	CVariableLenData();
private:
	int m_some_int;			// fixed length
	std::string m_some_str; // variable length
	CVariableLenData(const CVariableLenData&);
};

#endif //CVARIABLELENDATA_HPP

// Source file
#include <cstdio>
#include "CVariableLenData.h"

using namespace std;

CVariableLenData::CVariableLenData():m_some_int(0),m_some_str(){}

void CVariableLenData::Serialize(BuffPtr &ptr, BuffLen bufflen, BuffLen& writelen) const
{
	if(!ptr)
		return;
	writelen = _snprintf (ptr, bufflen,"%d", m_some_int);
	*(ptr+writelen) = ' ';		// after each numeric value add an space
	size_t len = writelen + 1;
	// now write the string
	// copy length
	writelen = _snprintf ( (ptr+len), bufflen,"%u", m_some_str.length());
	*(ptr + len ) = ' ';
	len = len + writelen + 1;
	// Copy the data
	memcpy( (ptr+len), m_some_str.c_str(), m_some_str.length());
	writelen = len;
	return;
}

Some links.

• http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/serialization.html
• http://functionx.com/cpp/articles/serialization.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serialization
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/234724/how-to-serialize-in-c
• http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_44_0/libs/serialization/doc/index.html

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