Working with QDataStream and QTcpSocket
The missing piece of the SDK is MesssageUtils. It deserves a dedicated section because it covers two major topics: serialization and QDataStream transactions.
We will start with the serialization. We already know that Message stores only an opaque QByteArray data member. As a consequence, the desired data has to be serialized as QByteArray before being passed to Message.
If we take the example of a JobRequest object, it is not directly sent. We first put it in a generic Message object with the appropriate Message type. The following diagram summarizes the sequence of actions to be done:
The JobRequest object is first serialized to a QByteArray class. It is then passed to a Message instance, which is in turn serialized to a final QByteArray. The deserialization process is the exact opposite of this sequence (from right to left).
Serializing data brings a lot of questions. How can we do it in a generic fashion? How do we handle the possible endianness of...
