Is it possible to serialize and deserialize a class in C++?

Question

The Boost::serialization library handles this rather elegantly. I've used it in several projects. There's an example program, showing how to use it, here.

The only native way to do it is to use streams. That's essentially all the Boost::serialization library does, it extends the stream method by setting up a framework to write objects to a text-like format and read them from the same format.

For built-in types, or your own types with operator<< and operator>> properly defined, that's fairly simple; see the C++ FAQ for more information.

I realize this is an old post but it's one of the first that comes up when searching for c++ serialization.

I encourage anyone who has access to C++11 to take a look at cereal, a C++11 header only library for serialization that supports binary, JSON, and XML out of the box. cereal was designed to be easy to extend and use and has a similar syntax to Boost.

Boost is a good suggestion. But if you would like to roll your own, it's not so hard.

Basically you just need a way to build up a graph of objects and then output them to some structured storage format (JSON, XML, YAML, whatever). Building up the graph is as simple as utilizing a marking recursive decent object algorithm and then outputting all the marked objects.

I wrote an article describing a rudimentary (but still powerful) serialization system. You may find it interesting: Using SQLite as an On-disk File Format, Part 2.

As far as "built-in" libraries go, the << and >> have been reserved specifically for serialization.

You should override << to output your object to some serialization context (usually an iostream) and >> to read data back from that context. Each object is responsible for outputting its aggregated child objects.

This method works fine so long as your object graph contains no cycles.

If it does, then you will have to use a library to deal with those cycles.

I recommend Google protocol buffers. I had the chance to test drive the library on a new project and it's remarkably easy to use. The library is heavily optimized for performance.

Protobuf is different than other serialization solutions mentioned here in the sense that it does not serialize your objects, but rather generates code for objects that are serialization according to your specification.

Boost::serialization is a great option, but I've encountered a new project: Cereal which I find much more elegant! I highly suggest investigating it.

You can check the amef protocol, an example of C++ encoding in amef would be like,

    //Create a new AMEF object
    AMEFObject *object = new AMEFObject();

    //Add a child string object
    object->addPacket("This is the Automated Message Exchange Format Object property!!","adasd");   

    //Add a child integer object
    object->addPacket(21213);

    //Add a child boolean object
    object->addPacket(true);

    AMEFObject *object2 = new AMEFObject();
    string j = "This is the property of a nested Automated Message Exchange Format Object";
    object2->addPacket(j);
    object2->addPacket(134123);
    object2->addPacket(false);

    //Add a child character object
    object2->addPacket('d');

    //Add a child AMEF Object
    object->addPacket(object2);

    //Encode the AMEF obejct
    string str = new AMEFEncoder()->encode(object,false);

Decoding in java would be like,

    string arr = amef encoded byte array value;
    AMEFDecoder decoder = new AMEFDecoder()
    AMEFObject object1 = AMEFDecoder.decode(arr,true);

The Protocol implementation has codecs for both C++ and Java, the interesting part is it can retain object class representation in the form of name value pairs, I required a similar protocol in my last project, when i incidentally stumbled upon this protocol, i had actually modified the base library according to my requirements. Hope this helps you.