Robert Ramey wrote:
I wasn't able to do this with shared_ptr and its becoming apparent that its not going to be obvious on how to do it.
Serializing a shared_ptr is both trivial and very difficult. Reminds me of the difference between a magazine article and a real production-level implementation. But it doesn't need any access to the physical representation, at least conceptually. I don't have much time in the moment, so I'll just offer the example below. More, including deserialization, later. #include <boost/shared_ptr.hpp> #include <boost/weak_ptr.hpp> #include <iostream> #include <vector> #include <map> #include <string> std::map< boost::shared_ptr<void>, int > wpmap; void write( std::ostream & os, int const & v ) { os << v << ' '; } void write( std::ostream & os, std::string const & v ) { os << v << ' '; } template<class T> void write( std::ostream & os, boost::shared_ptr<T> const & pt ) { if( pt ) { int pid = wpmap[ pt ]; if( pid != 0 ) { write( os, pid ); } else { pid = wpmap.size(); wpmap[ pt ] = pid; write( os, pid ); write( os, *pt ); } } else { write( os, 0 ); } } template<class T> void write( std::ostream & os, boost::weak_ptr<T> const & pt ) { write( os, pt.lock() ); } template<class T> void write( std::ostream & os, std::vector<T> const & v ) { write( os, (int)v.size() ); for( size_t i = 0; i < v.size(); ++i ) { write( os, v[i] ); } } int main() { std::vector< boost::shared_ptr<std::string> > v1; std::vector< boost::weak_ptr<std::string> > v2; v1.push_back( boost::shared_ptr<std::string>(new std::string("S1")) ); v1.push_back( v1[0] ); v1.push_back( boost::shared_ptr<std::string>(new std::string("S2")) ); v1.push_back( v1[0] ); v1.push_back( boost::shared_ptr<std::string>(new std::string("S3")) ); v1.push_back( v1[0] ); v1.push_back( v1[2] ); v2.push_back( v1[0] ); v2.push_back( v1[0] ); v2.push_back( v1[2] ); write( std::cout, v2 ); write( std::cout, v1 ); }