Serialization Topics

Home |  Overview |  How Do I |  Tutorial

Through class CDocument, MFC provides a default mechanism called serialization for storing data, including objects, in a file. Serialization lets your data objects persist from one program run to another by storing the contents of the objects in a file.

If you wish, you can bypass MFC serialization to create your own mechanism for persistent data storage. You will need to override the class member functions that initiate serialization at the user’s command. See the discussion in Technical Note 22 of the ID_FILE_OPEN, ID_FILE_SAVE, and ID_FILE_SAVE_AS standard commands.

What do you want to know more about?

• What MFC serialization is all about
  
  
• Serialization examples
  
  
• Class CDocument
  
  
• Class CArchive
  
  
• Class CFile
  
  
• Making my data class serializable
  
  
• Deriving my class from CObject
  
  
• Overriding CDocument::Serialize
  
  
• Using the DECLARE_SERIAL and IMPLEMENT_SERIAL macros
  
  
• Providing a default constructor
  
  
• Serializing an object to or from persistent storage
  
  
• Creating a CArchive object
  
  
• Using the CArchive << and >> operators
  
  
• Data types you can serialize with CArchive
  
  
• Serialization vs. database input/output as ways to manage persistence