Serialization of struct

Question

Suppose i have a struct whose member values i want to send over the network to another system using winsock 2. I'm using C++ language. How do i convert it to char * keeping in mind that the struct has to be serialized before sending and also how do i deserialize the char * into struct at the other end? I found boost serialization as a suggestion to similar question but can anyone illustrate with a small code snippet for both serialization and deserialization ?

This question might seem very basic but the other answers to the related posts did not help much.

Answer 1

Following example shows a simplest way to serialize struct into char array and de-serialize it.

#include <iostream>
#include <cstring>

#define BUFSIZE 512
#define PACKETSIZE sizeof(MSG)

using namespace std;

typedef struct MSG
{
    int type;
    int priority;
    int sender;
    char message[BUFSIZE];
}MSG;

void serialize(MSG* msgPacket, char *data);
void deserialize(char *data, MSG* msgPacket);
void printMsg(MSG* msgPacket);

int main()
{
    MSG* newMsg = new MSG;
    newMsg->type = 1;
    newMsg->priority = 9;
    newMsg->sender = 2;
    strcpy(newMsg->message, "hello from server\0");
    printMsg(newMsg);

    char data[PACKETSIZE];

    serialize(newMsg, data);

    MSG* temp = new MSG;
    deserialize(data, temp);
    printMsg(temp);

    return 0;
}

void serialize(MSG* msgPacket, char *data)
{
    int *q = (int*)data;    
    *q = msgPacket->type;       q++;    
    *q = msgPacket->priority;   q++;    
    *q = msgPacket->sender;     q++;

    char *p = (char*)q;
    int i = 0;
    while (i < BUFSIZE)
    {
        *p = msgPacket->message[i];
        p++;
        i++;
    }
}

void deserialize(char *data, MSG* msgPacket)
{
    int *q = (int*)data;    
    msgPacket->type = *q;       q++;    
    msgPacket->priority = *q;   q++;    
    msgPacket->sender = *q;     q++;

    char *p = (char*)q;
    int i = 0;
    while (i < BUFSIZE)
    {
        msgPacket->message[i] = *p;
        p++;
        i++;
    }
}

void printMsg(MSG* msgPacket)
{
    cout << msgPacket->type << endl;
    cout << msgPacket->priority << endl;
    cout << msgPacket->sender << endl;
    cout << msgPacket->message << endl;
}