Another “basic” question for the list again, apologies in advance.

I have a class with a data member which is an enumeration, e.g.:

typedef enum param_choice

{

PARAM_CHOICE_UINT8,

PARAM_CHOICE_UINT16,

PARAM_CHOICE_UINT32,

PARAM_CHOICE_INT8,

PARAM_CHOICE_BOOL

} param_choice_e;

I can quite happily user the Boost Serialization library to save and restore a class with a data member of this type:

class Stuff

{

friend std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& os, const Stuff& stuff

friend class boost::serialization::access;

template<class Archive>

void serialize(Archive& ar, const unsigned int file_version)

{

ar & BOOST_SERIALIZATION_NVP(choice);

}

param_choice choice;

public:

Stuff () {}

Stuff (param_choice theChoice);

};

This is using XML as the file-format. The data member appears in the file as an integer.

However, what I would LIKE to do is output the value of “choice” as a string (e.g. instead of outputing <choice>2</choice>, the file contains <choice>UINT32</choice>). And do a conversion when I read it all back in again, of course.

Can someone please provide some pointers to where I can find out how to do this? Or an example?

Is the solution going to end up along the lines of:

• Split the serialize into separate load and save routines
• In the save, convert the data member into a string and output this to the archive
• In the load, input from the archive into a string and then store this into the data member

Best regards in anticipation,

Graham.