Is it possible to serialize and deserialize a class in C++?

Solution 1:

The Boost::serialization library handles this rather elegantly. I've used it in several projects. There's an example program, showing how to use it, here.

The only native way to do it is to use streams. That's essentially all the Boost::serialization library does, it extends the stream method by setting up a framework to write objects to a text-like format and read them from the same format.

For built-in types, or your own types with operator<< and operator>> properly defined, that's fairly simple; see the C++ FAQ for more information.

Solution 2:

I realize this is an old post but it's one of the first that comes up when searching for c++ serialization.

I encourage anyone who has access to C++11 to take a look at cereal, a C++11 header only library for serialization that supports binary, JSON, and XML out of the box. cereal was designed to be easy to extend and use and has a similar syntax to Boost.