CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++serializationdeserializationflatbuffers
villintehaspam
villintehaspam

Reputation: 8754

Multiple root tables in flatbuffers

I'm checking out Flatbuffers for implementing a communication protocol. When a message is received, it may in my case contain a number of different tables. If I understand correctly, the way to achieve this in Flatbuffers is to use a "root" table that has each possible different table in a union.

In my case, I will already know the incoming type (type is part of the header) => I do not necessarily need to be able to place each type inside a single table. However, it does not seem to be possible to mark multiple tables as "root" types. This means that if I have defined the tables Foo and Bar that I can only get either a GetFoo() or a GetBar() method for deserialization, but not both.

I am assuming that it would also be possible to split the definitions across different schema files, but since they would share some subclasses I would also need a shared schema file for the common definitions. This seems to be a bit more complicated than necessary for simple cases.

Is there another way of being able to deserialize multiple different types with Flatbuffers?

Upvotes: 5

Views: 4860

Answers (1)

Aardappel
Aardappel

Reputation: 6074

Yes, you can do this. Note that the generated GetMyType() is just short for the templated GetRootAs<MyType> which you can use with any type.

Upvotes: 7

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