Question

I’m trying to find a parameters framework in C++ to synchronize parameters and variant types between a client/server. I’ve tried googling around, but I think I don’t have the right search terms.

Example: An object on the server could have the following parameters defined and mapped to the member variables:

"name":  std::string,
"alpha": float,
"mask":  uint

Where these parameters could then be queried by the client and their values adjusted.

Is there something similar to this that exists in the open source world?

Edit for clarification:

The server I’ve created is a video application, where a video is displayed with N number of filters. The filters have N number of parameters, and are of different types. I want the client to be able to query for: # of filters, the filter parameters, and those parameters types.

Answer 1

Let me rephrase.

What you want is a data exchange format between clients and servers written in C++ that lets you pass around structures known to both sides in an efficient and easy to process way, that hopefully lets you be upwards compatible so that you can upgrade server and client separately.

If so then http://code.google.com/p/protobuf/ is Google’s solution for this exact problem, used extensively internally.