Serializing QVector of pointers

[YuFr]

Hi,

I'm not sure that this is a full question of Qt, but I don't know where to ask, so I am here !

I have a QVector of objects, referenced by pointers. It is so a QVector of pointers.
I want to serialize my class containing this QVector. I overloaded the operators << and >>, and the serializing is working for the most of my attributes.
However, the serializing of my QVector is not working. I bet I have to serialize all the objects inside the QVector and rebuilt it in output, but I don't know how to do that. I bet I should do a deep copy of the QVector, but don't know how to proceed inside my operator << or >>.
When I use the >> or << operator for my QVector, it serializes just the reference, and not the objects. How can I do that ?

Thanks by advance

[Hostel]

If you have a << and >> for your class, which is in QVector then you could write function like this:
@
// PSEUDOCODE - not working
serializeVectorWithPointers()//
{
for (int i = 0; i < vector.size(); ++i)
{
output << *( vector.at( i ) );
}
}
@

[goetz]

Did you implement operator<< and operator>> for the pointer type of your type?

@
QDataStream& operator<<(QDataStream& s, const YourType *yt);
QDataStream& operator>>(QDataStream& s, YourType *yt);
@

And don't forget to make operator<< a friend of your class, otherwise you cannot access the private members you want to serialize.

[andre]

I would start looking into other solutions as well. Boost::serialize for instance can serialize pointers to objects, and makes sure that you don't serialize the same object more than one time.