Hmm ok I split up the save() and load() functions so I can just serialize the individual members of these 3rd party classes. That works ok. The save() method is defined like: voidd save(Archive &ar, const unsigned int version) const { ar & m_3rdPartyClass.m_SomeInteger; ... } One of the data types though is MFC's CString - which is just like std:string, just a wrapper around a character array. The only way to get the contents of a CString as a char array is a function called GetBuffer() which returns a non-const char pointer to the internal array. My compiler does not seem to like this, as I guess the save() function is defined as const? Is this right, and if so, is there any way I can get around this one? ar & m_3rdPartyClass.m_SomeCString.GetBuffer(); // returns non const char* !! Thanks, Mark On 2/9/07, David Klein <dave_chp@gmx.de> wrote:

Mark Wyszomierski wrote:

...

Hi, I'm using the boost serialization methods, they're great. I'm using some 3rd party classes that I don't have access to, so I can't add a serialize() member function to them. It's something like:

class CMyClass { int m_nWhatever; CSomeClass m_sc; // I am just using this from someone else's library....

void serialize(Archive &ar, const unsigned int version) { ar & version; ar & m_nWhatever; ar & m_sc; // fails!!! } }

how can I get around this?

Thanks, Mark _______________________________________________ Boost-users mailing list Boost-users@lists.boost.org http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users

Hi Mark,

you don't necessarily need a member function. see f.ex:

http://boost.org/libs/serialization/doc/tutorial.html#nonintrusiveversion

-- HTH dave

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David Klein wrote:

...

One of the data types though is MFC's CString - which is just like std:string, just a wrapper around a character array. The only way to get the contents of a CString as a char array is a function called GetBuffer() which returns a non-const char pointer to the internal array.

returns a non-const char pointer? so the mfc CString gives you a pointer to a buffer you might want to modify from outside the class? Looks like a bad idea to me. In any case I would use const_cast to cast the result to a "char const * const" to cast to a constant pointer to a const array of chars. This should do the trick. If you want to avoid sprinkling this syntactic vinegar through your code you mith make an non-intrusive serialization of mfc CString so you can just use: #include "...mfc/cstring.hpp" CString x; ... ar << x; ... ar >> x; Robert Ramey

...

My compiler does not seem to like this, as I guess the save() function is defined as const? Is this right, and if so, is there any way I can get around this one?

ar & m_3rdPartyClass.m_SomeCString.GetBuffer(); // returns non const char* !!

I don't know how serialization for std::string is done, but it's supported by the library. Maybe you could create a temporary std::string from your MFC string and serialize that one instead? Though there may be a decrease in performance if you have a lot of strings to deal with.

Thanks for all your replies. This seems to work: ar & (CString::PCXSTR)m_strMyCString; that PCXSTR makes it const, I suppose. Is it possible though to serialize a char * pointer? Because I'm stuffing this into an std::string before serialzing, in reality, like: ar & std::string( (CString::PCXSTR)m_strMyCString); not so bad writing it, but reading it back in requires 3 lines: std::string strTemp; ar & strTemp; m_strMyCString = strTemp.c_str(); not sure if it's possible to just do it from a const char * pointer. Thanks, Mark On 2/9/07, Jeffrey McBeth <mcbeth@broggs.org> wrote:

Quoting David Klein <dave_chp@gmx.de>:

...

Mark Wyszomierski wrote:

...

One of the data types though is MFC's CString - which is just like std:string, just a wrapper around a character array. The only way to get the contents of a CString as a char array is a function called GetBuffer() which returns a non-const char pointer to the internal array. My compiler does not seem to like this, as I guess the save() function is defined as const? Is this right, and if so, is there any way I can get around this one?

ar & m_3rdPartyClass.m_SomeCString.GetBuffer(); // returns non const char* !!

I don't know how serialization for std::string is done, but it's supported by the library. Maybe you could create a temporary std::string from your MFC string and serialize that one instead? Though there may be a decrease in performance if you have a lot of strings to deal with.

Try casting it to an LPCTSTR. That should actually be far enough for the Serializer to work, as that is const pointer to a TChar array, and TChar is simply a wchar_t or char depending on if you have Unicode turned on. I wouldn't put any bets on the serialized data loading into another app that was compiled with the opposite Unicode setting.

ar & (LPCTSTR)(m_3rdPartyClass.m_SomeCString);

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