How to do serialization of Class having members of custom data types in C ?

Problem

The goal is to serialize and deserialize a C class Mango that contains members of custom data types.

Implementation

The suggested implementation includes the following functions:

std::vector serialize(Mango const& Man);
Mango                deserialize(std::span data);

void serialize_to_stream(std::ostream& os, Mango const& Man);
void deserialize(std::istream& is, Mango& Man);

Customizations for Data Types

Customizations are required for all relevant types (including ValType, FuntionMango, MangoType, and Mango):

// Define `do_generate` and `do_parse` functions
// for custom data types.

Example Implementation

void serialize_to_stream(std::ostream& os, Mango const& Man) {
    do_generate(std::ostreambuf_iterator(os), Man);
}

void deserialize(std::istream& is, Mango& Man) {
    Man = {}; // clear it!
    std::istreambuf_iterator f(is), l{};
    if (!do_parse(f, l, Man))
        throw std::runtime_error("deserialize");
}

Portability Considerations

• Endianness may need to be normalized, which can be done manually or using a library like Boost Endian (header-only).

Additional Notes

• This approach allows data to be efficiently stored and transferred between different processes or systems.

Live Example:

https://coliru.stacked-crooked.com/a/288829ec964a3ca9