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.xml - serialization format

A .xml file contains the serialization of an object data structure generated with the XMLSerializer:

The top level elements represent the groups in which the object are organised. The object names are unique within these groups.

<group1> <object1 val="value of object 1"/> <object2 val="value of object 2"/> </group1> <group2> <object1 val="value of object 1"/> </group2>

An object can be of following type:

  • Basic types: char, char*, std::string, bool, usigned int, int, float, double
  • STL containers: std::array, std::vector, std::pair
  • Eigen types: Eigen::Matrix, Eigen::SparseMatrix
  • User defined types: XMLSerializable*.

There can also be a hierarchical structure like vector<int>, this will result in the following serialization:

<group> <vector size="3"> <value0 val="1"/> <value1 val="2"/> <value2 val="3"/> </vector> </group>

An example of a serialization of an instance of the class Test

class Test{ int var1; vector&ltfloat> vec1; };

is shown here:

<group> <Test> <var1 val="0"> <vec1 size="2"> <value0 val="1"/> <value1 val="2"/> </vector> </Test> </group>

In the following we show the serialization of Eigen matrices.

Eigen::Matrix<int,4,3>:

<group> <matrix row="4" col="3" matrix=" 1,2,3, 4,5,6, 7,8,9, 10,11,12/> </group>

Eigen::SparseMatrix<int> (3x3 identity saved as triplets of the non-zero entries):

<group> <matrix row="3" col="3" matrix=" 0,0,1, 1,1,1, 2,2,1/> </group>