Serialization/Deserialization of a struct to a char* in C

Question

I have a struct

struct Packet {
    int senderId;
    int sequenceNumber;
    char data[MaxDataSize];

    char* Serialize() {
        char *message = new ch         


        

Answer 1

To answer your question generally, C++ has no reflection mechanism, and so manual serialize and unserialize functions defined on a per-class basis is the best you can do. That being said, the serialization function you wrote will mangle your data. Here is a correct implementation:

char * message = new char[MaxMailSize];
int net_senderId = htonl(senderId);
int net_sequenceNumber = htonl(sequenceNumber);
memcpy(message, &net_senderId, sizeof(net_senderId));
memcpy(message + sizeof(net_senderId), &net_sequenceNumber, sizeof(net_sequenceNumber));