Initial source commit

minorGems/io/Serializable.h

@@ -0,0 +1,81 @@
+/*
+ * Modification History
+ *
+ * 2001-January-10		Jason Rohrer
+ * Created.
+ * Added untility functions for converting integers to and from byte arrays.
+ *
+ * 2001-January-15		Jason Rohrer
+ * Made utility functions static.
+ * Fixed a major bug in the longToBytes function.
+ *
+ * 2001-February-3		Jason Rohrer
+ * Removed the long io functions, which are now contained in the
+ * input- and outputStream classes.
+ *
+ * 2005-November-21		Jason Rohrer
+ * Fixed a warning by adding a virtual destructor. 
+ */
+
+#include "minorGems/common.h"
+
+
+#ifndef SERIALIZABLE_CLASS_INCLUDED
+#define SERIALIZABLE_CLASS_INCLUDED
+
+#include "InputStream.h"
+#include "OutputStream.h"
+
+/**
+ * Interface for an object that can be serialized to and deserialized
+ * from a stream.
+ *
+ * Note that the deserialize function is meant to be called from an already
+ * constructed object (to set object parameters using data read from the
+ * stream), and is not a method of obtaining an object.
+ *
+ * All multi-byte data members should be encoded in using a big endian format.
+ *
+ * @author Jason Rohrer
+ */ 
+class Serializable {
+
+	public:
+		
+		/**
+		 * Writes this object out to a stream.
+		 *
+		 * @param inOutputStream the stream to write to.
+		 *
+		 * @return the number of bytes written successfully,
+		 *   or -1 for a stream error.
+		 */
+		virtual int serialize( OutputStream *inOutputStream ) = 0;
+		
+		
+		/**
+		 * Reads this object in from a stream.
+		 *
+		 * @param inInputStream the stream to read from.
+		 *
+		 * @return the number of bytes read successfully,
+		 *   or -1 for a stream error.
+		 */
+		virtual int deserialize( InputStream *inInputStream ) = 0;
+		
+
+        
+        virtual ~Serializable();
+        
+	};		
+
+
+
+inline Serializable::~Serializable() {
+    // does nothing
+    // exists to ensure that subclass destructors are called
+    }
+	
+
+
+#endif