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.