On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 11:24:03AM -0400, Stefan Berger wrote: > On 03/14/2013 11:11 AM, mdroth wrote: > >On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 10:51:49AM -0400, Stefan Berger wrote: > >>On 03/14/2013 10:28 AM, mdroth wrote: > >>>On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 09:39:14AM -0400, Stefan Berger wrote: > >>>>On 03/14/2013 08:18 AM, mdroth wrote: > >>>>>On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 09:48:11PM -0400, Stefan Berger wrote: > >>>>>>On 03/13/2013 07:18 PM, mdroth wrote: > >>>>>>>On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 06:00:24PM -0400, Stefan Berger wrote: > >>>>>>>>On 03/13/2013 04:52 PM, mdroth wrote: > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>Visitors don't have any knowledge of the data structures they're > >>>>>>>visiting > >>>>>>>outside of what we tell them via the visit_*() API. > >>>>>>> > >>>>>>>[...] > >>>>>>> > >>>>>>>For example, a visitor for a 16-element array of: > >>>>>>> > >>>>>>>typedef struct ComplexType { > >>>>>>> int32_t foo; > >>>>>>> char *bar; > >>>>>>>} ComplexType; > >>>>>>> > >>>>>>>would look something like: > >>>>>>> > >>>>>>>visit_start_carray(v, ...); // instruct visitor how to calculate > >>>>>>>offsets > >>>>>>>for (i = 0; i < 16; i++) { > >>>>>>> visit_type_ComplexType(v, ...) // instruct visitor how to handle > >>>>>>> elem > >>>>>>> visit_next_carray(v, ...); // instruct visitor to move to next > >>>>>>> offset > >>>>>>>} > >>>>>>>visit_end_carray(v, ...); // instruct visitor to finalize array > >>>>>>Given this example above, I think we will need the sized buffer. The > >>>>>>sized buffer targets binary arrays and their encoding. If I was to > >>>>>>encode an 'unsigned char[n]' (e.g., n=200) using n, or n/2 or n/4 > >>>>>>loops like above breaking it apart in u8, u16 or u32 respectively I > >>>>>>think this would 'not bed good' also considering the 2 bytes for tag > >>>>>>and length being added by ASN.1 for every such datatype > >>>>>>(u8,u16,u32). The sized buffer allows you to for example take a > >>>>>>memory page and write it out in one chunk adding a few bytes of > >>>>>>ASN.1 'decoration' around the actual data. > >>>>>You could do it with this interface as well actually. The Visitor will > >>>>>need to maintain some internal state to differentiate what it does with > >>>>>subsequent visit_type*/visit_next_carray/visit_end_carry. There's no > >>>>>reason it couldn't also track the elem size so it could tag a buffer > >>>>>"en masse" when visit_end_carray() gets called. > >>>>It depends on what you pass into visit_start_carray. In your case if > >>>>you pass in ComplexType you would pass in a sizeof(ComplexType) for > >>>>the size of each element presumably. The problem is now you havechar > >>>>*foo, a string pointer, hanging off of this structure. How > >>>>would you handle that? Serializing ComplexType's foo and pointer > >>>>obviously won't do it. > >>>Why not? visit_type_ComplexType() knows how to deal with > >>>the individual fields, including the string pointer. I'm not sure > >>>what's at issue here. > >>> > >>>In this case the handling for ComplexType would look something like: > >>> > >>>visit_type_Complex: > >>> visit_start_struct > >>> visit_type_uin32 //foo > >>> visit_type_str //bar > >>> visit_end_struct > >>> > >>>Granted, strings are easier to deal with. If char * was instead a plain > >>>old uint8_t*, we'd need a nested call to start_carray for each element. > >>>in this case it would look something like: > >>> > >>>visit_type_Complex: > >>> visit_start_struct > >>> visit_type_uin32 //foo field > >>> visit_start_carray //bar field > >>> for (i = 0; i < len_of_bar; i++): > >>> visit_type_uint8 > >>> visit_next_carray > >>> visit_end_carray > >>You really want to create a separate element for each element in > >>this potentially large binary array? I guess it depends on the > >>underlying data, but this has the potential of generating a lot of > >>control code around each such byte... As said, for ASN.1 encoding, > >>each such byte would be decorated with a tag and a length value, > >>consuming 2 more bytes per byte. > >I addressed this earlier. Your visitor doesn't have tag each > >element: if it know it's handling an array (because we told it via > >start_carray()), it can buffer them internally and tag the array en > >masse when end_carray() is issued. > > If we were to do this using carray on an array of structs of the > following type > > struct SimpleStruct { > uint8_t a; > uint8_t b; > uint32_t c; > } > > then the serialization of a and b would be buffered and flushed once > the 32bit output visitor (or any other than uint8_t output visitor) > would be called?
I don't quite understand. For a struct, we'd tag each field individually, right? It's avoiding the need to tag each element in a list, each SimpleStruct, that's at issue, right? We have a special case for u8 arrays that is currently handled by qapi_sized_buffer(), and now we're trying to generalize this optimized handling for more complex data types via visit_carray_*? I guess my first question is whether or not it's possible for more complex data types. For u8 arrays we seem to use a special OCTET_STRING encoding. If we're not sure we can do this more generally, we do have the option of only special-casing u8 arrays to use the OCTET_STRING encoding, and handle the others with "non-optimized" encodings. If you have an idea for what a generalized, optimized encoding that's applicable for non-u8 types would look like, we can work through that if you have an example optimized encoding for, say, and array of SimpleStruct. > > Stefan >