Rethinking serialization for Qt6

Arnaud Clère

Serialization is an old problem, still, we keep writing code to serialize C++ data in specific ways again and again. With Qt5 for instance, you may have to code: QDebug << to debug it, QDataStream << and >> to marshal it to another Qt application, use QSettings to make it persistent, QJson* or QXml* to convey it on the web, QCbor* for the IoT, and QAbstractModelItem for the DB/GUI. Even though such code needs to be customized here and there, it is mostly boilerplate code. So, can we make this simpler for Qt6?

Indeed, I will present a solution that enables to read/write C++ data from/to any of those APIs by defining a single function which can be easily customized to specific needs. Its runtime overhead being almost negligible, I will go on talking about many data formats from QDataStream to XML since that is where the actual performance/safety/interoperability tradeoffs are made. That should trigger an interesting discussion on the tradeoffs made by the only broadly implemented serialization for Qt types: QDataStream.

Finally, I hope to trigger enough interest from the community to review and polish this proposal, and to enable more serialization choices for most Qt6 types.