Hi Paul, Thanks for your detailed reply. What you describe seems suitable for my needs (I'm interested in simplest techniques, my problem is complex enough to try premature improvements at the tool level :) however I cannot comment more until I do some real experiments with SRP. Thanks again Hernán 2011/10/12 Paul Baumann <paul.baumann@theice.com>:

Hernán,

There are several ways to do it with SRP.

The encoding supports embedded data (variable and fixed width), so you could do inline serialization. It is clever enough that it is even possible to do this with positional access even to base64 encoded data. Tricks like that are used for example to update individual values in a persistent index. There are simpler techniques that should work for any marshaler...

All marshalers should have some form of pre-save and post-load exchange. SRP has many ways to pre-save and post-load while maintaining relative references. SRP can even do post-load exchanges after the rest of the object graph is loaded and still keep relative references (without using a #become:).

Save a proxy in place of the object. The proxy would be a class that you create to do what you want as a post-load actions. You can create the proxy as part of a pre-save action. The proxy can have the encoded binary ByteArray you want embedded in the data. The post-load of the proxy would typically unmarshal the embedded data. Here is an example of a class-based exchange:

SpecialSaveObject>>srpSavePreMap: aContext        ^MyOtherMarshalProxy newFor: self

MyOtherMarshalerProxy.binData

MyOtherMarshalerProxy class>>newFor: anObject        ^self new save: anObject

MyOtherMarshalProxy>>save: anObject        binData := self marshaler saveAsBinary: anObject.

MyOtherMarshalerProxy>>srpLoadPostMap: aContext        ^OtherMarshaler loadFromBinary: binData

Depending on your needs, you might want your object to remember the embedded data. In that case, you could store the encoded data in an inst var that is lazy-initialized as a pre-save action and save only that inst var. A post-load action could perhaps read the other attributes from the encoded data that you saved.

SRP also allows any object to answer back "extended attributes" that are saved with an object (#srpExtendedAttributes) and can be restored after loading (#srpExtendedAttributes:). Extended attributes are typically data you want associated with an object that is not directly referenced by the object. You could save/load encoded data along with the SRP saved object.

Paul Baumann

-----Original Message----- From: vwnc-bounces@cs.uiuc.edu [mailto:vwnc-bounces@cs.uiuc.edu] On Behalf Of Hernán Morales Durand Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 15:36 To: Pharo Development; The general-purpose Squeak developers list; vwnc mailing list Subject: [vwnc] Any serializer can customize serialization strategy?

Is there any serializer (Fuel/StOMP/Ma object serialization/BOSS/SRP/SIXX??) which let me attach an external compressor/decompressor for specific Strings to the serialization/deserialization process? With external I mean it could be in a separate binary (I could arrange the binding though). Thanks

Hernán

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