This looks really great! I'll try it out sometime later. A few questions:
1. What other archiver formats besides XML might be useful? (I
remember binary can't work because of the way keys work, though
messagepack is probably a better option for lightweight serialization in
general. Orange's niche is portability and serializing as many types as
possible.)
2. What are the prospects for submitting this for inclusion in Phobos?
Serialization is something basic and universally needed enough that it
should not require a third-party library.
3. Given that all of the necessary introspection already works, what
are the prospects for creating a Clone archiver? A Clone archiver would
not actually serialize anything and instead would deep clone whatever
data structure it receives. If Orange gets into Phobos, cloning could
be recognized by std.concurrency as a safe, simple way to pass complex
object graphs between threads. I'm picturing an API something like this:
import std.stdio, whateverOrangeEndsUpBeingNamed.
struct Cloned(T) {
T obj;
}
Cloned!T cloned(T)(T obj) { return typeof(return)(obj); }
void spawmMe() {
receive((int[][]) { writeln("Received an int[][]."); });
}
void main() {
auto tid = spawn(&spawnMe);
auto mat = new int[][](42, 42);
// FAILS: Implicit sharing.
tid.send(mat);
// Works. mat is automatically deep cloned and the clone is sent
// to tid. send recognized the Cloned struct as special and
// processes the payload accordingly.
tid.send(cloned(mat));
}
On 8/20/2011 11:13 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
I've almost finished the rewrite of my serialization library Orange. I'm
hoping that someone wants to give it a try and see what issues/bugs are
found.
Project page: http://dsource.org/projects/orange
Source code: https://github.com/jacob-carlborg/orange
There are two usage examples on the project page. For more examples I
recommend looking at the unit tests in the "tests" directory.
Description:
Orange is a serialization library for D1 and D2, supporting both Tango
and Phobos. It can serialize most of the available types in D, including
third party types and can serialize through base class references. It
supports fully automatic serialization of all supported types and also
supports several ways to customize the serialization process. Orange has
a separate front end (the serializer) and back end (the archive) making
it possible for the user to create new archive types that can be used
with the existing serializer.
Features:
* Automatically serializes the base classes
* Supports events (before and after (de)serializing)
* Supports non-serialized fields and classes (you can say that some
fields in a class should not be serialized)
* Licensed under the Boost license
* Std/runtime library independent
* Extendable - possible to create new archive types and use them with
the existing serializer
* Serializes through base class references
* Serializes third party types
* Customization of the (de)serialization process, both intrusive and
non-intrusive
* Properly (de)serializes slices and pointers
Known Issues/Limitations:
* Due to limitations in the XML module provided by Phobos the XMLArchive
will only work with "char" as the template type with D2
* Due to several bugs/limitations in the compiler/runtime even the D2
version requires you to register the type when serializing through base
class references
* No built-in support for versioning
* Floating point numbers are not serialized as hexadecimal (D1)
