[Boost-users] [Serialization] Runtime checking of types in deserialization

28 Oct 2008

      Hi,

is there any way to check whether the class type used in deserialization
is identical to the class type in the serialization? Below is a simple
example, that serializes class "Data" into a text archive and
deserializes this archive into class "StringData". If that happens I
would like an exception to be thrown. Is this possible?

Thanks for any help,
Frank

#include <boost/archive/text_oarchive.hpp>
#include <boost/archive/text_iarchive.hpp>

#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>

using namespace std;

class Data {
public:
   Data() { for (int i=0; i<100; i++) a[i]=i; };
   int a[100];

   template<class Archive>
   void serialize(Archive & ar, const unsigned int) { ar & a; }
};

class StringData {
public:
   StringData() {};
   string s;

   template<class Archive>
   void serialize(Archive & ar, const unsigned int) { ar & s; }
};

int main() {

   ostringstream oss;

   // Serialize the class
   const Data d1;
   {
     boost::archive::text_oarchive oa(oss);
     oa << d1;
   }

   // Deserialize it using the wrong type
   StringData d2;
   {
     istringstream iss(oss.str());
     boost::archive::text_iarchive ia(iss);
     ia >> d2;
   }

   cout << oss.str() << endl;
   cout << d2.s << endl;
}

Output:
=======
22 serialization::archive 4 0 0 100 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38
39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62
63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86
87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

[Boost-users] [Serialization] Runtime checking of types in deserialization

Frank Winklmeier