Direct boost serialization to char array

Question

Hi all,

Boost serialization doc's assert that the way to serialize/deserialize items is using a binary/text archive with a stream on the underlying structure. This works fine if I wan't to use the serialized data as an std::string, but my intention is to convert it directly to a char* buffer. How can I achieve this without creating a temporary string?

Solved! For the ones that wanted a example:

char buffer[4096];

boost::iostreams::basic_array_sink<char> sr(buffer, buffer_size);  
boost::iostreams::stream< boost::iostreams::basic_array_sink<char> > source(sr);

boost::archive::binary_oarchive oa(source);

oa << serializable_object; 

Answer 1

IIUC, you would like to write to a preallocated array of fixed size.

You could use a boost::iostreams::array_sink (wrapped with stream to give it an std::ostream interface) for that.