Re: [Boost-users] Boost Serialization calling a custom serialize method

18 Aug 2010

      Pooyan Dadvand wrote:
...
Hi,
I'm trying to use the boost serialization in our project "Kratos" (a
Multi-physics finite element code) in which I found the following
problem, I have a class Variable which is derived from VariableData
as follow:
Class VariableData
{
                std::size_t mKey;
public:
.....
};
template<class TDataType>
class Variable : public VariableData
{
....
}
Seems to me that what would work is:

Class VariableData{
    std::size_t m_Key;
public:
    virtual ~VariableData() = 0;
};

template<class TDataType>
class Veriable : public VariableData {
    ...
}

This would work with the library in a normal way.
...
Now I have a container which holds a pairs, consist of VariableData
pointer to the Variable and a void* pointer to its value:
std::vector<std::pair<const VariableData*, void*> >
I can't understand what the "void *" could possibly be useful for here.
Nor can I understand why you would use it.  The whole idea
of trying to serialize a "void *" seems totally non-sensical to me. I have
no idea how or way one would want to do this.

Robert Ramey