General Purpose Data Serializer

Joel Bodenmann

Hi,

Our company is developing several C++ / Qt applications that need to generate XML files that can be processed by other (3rd-party) XML processors/applications. Unfortunately, most existing serializers that produce XML output did not fit our requirements.
I'm proud to present our solution: GPDS - A General Purpose Data Serializer.

It's still in a very rough state but definitely usable. Everything can be found here: https://gpds.simulton.com

The library comes with a *.pri file for easy integration into Qt projects. Furthermore, we'll add (de)serialization support for Qt types such as QString very soon.

Any kind of feedback is welcomed.

sierdzio

Looks good! Any plans to support JSON output, too?

Joel Bodenmann

Yep, a JSON backend (within GPDS I call them "Archiver") is planned. However, adding support for Qt's standard types is higher up in the list of priorities right now. I assume JSON support will be there within a few days/weeks.

After the JSON archiver there are plans to add support for binary formats such as BSON as well.

sierdzio

Nice, thanks :-)

fcarney

Oh man, we have a serializer that produces <key> for every tag. I was wondering why on earth anyone would design a format that way. Now I understand why, it was produced by some kind of serializer. Thank you for providing some sanity to this mess we call xml. I like xml in concept, but some of the tools out there make me wonder about my sanity at times.

import

This post is deleted!

Joel Bodenmann

We've added support for the first Qt types: QString and qreal.
You can now do this:

class Color : public Gpds::Serialize
{
public:
    QString name;
    int red;
    int green;
    int blue;

    virtual Gpds::Container toContainer() const override
    {
        Gpds::Container c;

        c.setComment("a color object");
        c.addAttribute("format", "rgb");
        c.addAttribute("name", name);

        c.addValue("red", red).addAttribute("depth", "32");
        c.addValue("green", green).addAttribute("depth", "32");
        c.addValue("blue", blue).addAttribute("depth", "32");

        return c;
    }

    virtual void fromContainer(const Gpds::Container& c) override
    {
        // Retrieve format
        const QString& formatString = c.getAttribute("format").value_or("n/a");
        assert( formatString == "rgb" );

        name = c.getAttribute("name").value_or("n/a");
        red = c.getValue<int>("red");
        green = c.getValue<int>("green");
        blue = c.getValue<int>("blue");
    }
};

Which will result in the following XML:

<color format="rgb" name="Black">
	<blue depth="32">0</blue>
	<green depth="32">0</green>
	<red depth="32">0</red>
</color>

There's also a Qt specific demo/example in the repo.

Isn't the world wonderful?
There's still a lot of stuff left to do tho.