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Using types defined by other libraries in slice.

Hi, I'm just starting to learn Ice (reading the manual at the moment) and I've noticed that the manual does not describe how to use types defined by libraries (or any type that doesn't have a slice definition) in slice.

I've searched the forums and found out that it isn't (or maybe wasn't) possible to transfer non-slice types with Ice.
Is there some trick to allow transfer of arbitary types with Ice, maybe some sort of slice trick or wrapper class.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Genia.

Comments

  • No, that's not possible. The Slice definitions end up driving the code generation for marshaling and unmarshaling. If a type does not have a Slice definition, then the Ice run time has no idea how deal with a value of that type.

    The closest thing you can do to transmit arbitrary types is to serialize them yourself (for example, into a byte sequence or into a string) and deserialize them at the other end. (But of course, as far as the Ice run time is concerned, those types then are simply blobs of bytes, so you won't get any type checking on them.)

    Cheers,

    Michi.
  • Thank you for your response, I will transmit my data as raw binary data.

    My question is this: are custom data types serialization planned for a future release? If so, how far away is this release (minor version, major version, even later?)
  • We don't have any such feature planned for the time being. If you have a commercial need for this, you can contact us at info@zeroc.com.

    Cheers,

    Michi.