Serialization/Deserialization with prototype objects

Question

Basically I got into problem where I am not sure what to do next. Maybe I just made my solution too complicated and there's one more simpler or I just don't see an answer. I am developing a system where each object has a prototype parent of its own. Prototype object has all the information that objects needs. During the serialization I only store properties that are different from the same property in prototype object. I do that do decrease serialized object file size. That seems nice, but it creates a new problem.

Here's an example: lets say I have a enemy character object. It has name, health, inventory values, etc. During game saving process I serialize all of it, excluding values that didn't change and are the same like in prototype object. That part is easy, but what I don't understand is how to solve my deserialization process.

When I load my game back I want to deserialize objects from my save files and then - if a prototype objects exists, I want to populate deserialized objects with prototype object data. The problem that I see in this case is that if character's inventory contains different items from its prototype - it will still receive those items from original blueprint object.

How can I automate cases like that where I want to skip some values if they are already there? For example if health value already exists - I don't want a original value from prototype. Or if inventory already has items in it - I don't want to receive items from blueprint object.

What is a prototype object? Do you mean an object with the default values? — Paul, Mar 03 '15 at 03:54

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 03 '15 at 03:58

1

You can do something like this:

JObject o1 = JObject.Parse(@"{
  'FirstName': 'John',
  'LastName': 'Smith',
  'Enabled': false,
  'Roles': [ 'User' ]
}");
JObject o2 = JObject.Parse(@"{
  'Enabled': true,
  'Roles': [ 'User', 'Admin' ]
}");

o1.Merge(o2, new JsonMergeSettings
{
    // union array values together to avoid duplicates
    MergeArrayHandling = MergeArrayHandling.Union
});

string json = o1.ToString();
// {
//   "FirstName": "John",
//   "LastName": "Smith",
//   "Enabled": true,
//   "Roles": [
//     "User",
//     "Admin"
//   ]
// }

Copied from: http://james.newtonking.com/archive/2014/08/04/json-net-6-0-release-4-json-merge-dependency-injection

answered Mar 03 '15 at 03:58

Paul

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Thanks! I will look into it and will reply if it works in my case. – tommy_kid Mar 03 '15 at 04:00
Paul, it works. Thank you, again. Any ideas if it would be possible to do something easy like this to extract exact changes from o2 object by comparing o2 with original o1? – tommy_kid Mar 03 '15 at 04:51
This answer may be useful: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1068834/object-comparison-in-javascript – Paul Mar 03 '15 at 04:53
Thanks. It should do a job. – tommy_kid Mar 03 '15 at 04:55

Serialization/Deserialization with prototype objects

1 Answers1