How to Create Persistent Objects-2 : Page 2

Step 1: Serializing Built-in Datatypes
Ultimately, every object consists of built-in data members such as int, bool, char [] and so on. Our first exercise is to write such datatypes to an ofstream (read more on <fstream> file I/O here). We store the values in their binary format. For this purpose, we use the write() and read() member functions. write() takes the address and the size of a variable and writes its bit pattern to a file stream. read() takes two arguments of type char * and long which contain buffer's address and its size in bytes, respectively. The following example demonstrates how to store two integers in an ofstream:

#include <:fstream>:
using namespace std;
int main()
{
 int x,y; //mouse coordinates
 //..assign values to x and y
 ofstream archive("coord.dat", ios::binary);
 archive.write(reinterpret_cast(&x), sizeof (x));
 archive.write(reinterpret_cast(&x), sizeof (x));
 archive.close();
}

The use of reinterpret_cast is necessary because write() takes const char * as its first argument whereas &x and &y are of type int *.

We retrieve the previously stored values as follows:

#include <fstream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
 int x,y;
 ifstream archive("coord.dat");
 archive.read((reinterpret_cast(&x), sizeof(x));
 archive.read((reinterpret_cast(&y), sizeof(y));
}

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