[Development] QVariant container API

[Thiago Macieira]

On Monday, 1 April 2019 11:09:27 CEST Vasily Pupkin wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> I would like to submit a patch. Since it is probably going to break binary
> compatibility and is mostly about coding conventions, I would like to have
> some feedback before investing time.

If it's going to break BC, it's a Qt6 API only. Please design your change so 
that it exists inside an #ifdef alongside the existing code.

> The general idea is to create a playground project for automatic
> (de)serialization for Qt (not manual, i.e. overriding operators). The only
> stopper is container deserialization.

I'm not sure I want to see more Datastream-based serialisation. The code there 
is too fragile and not compatible enough with standards. I recommend you 
reconsider and think about a more standard format.

> Seriazation is quite straightforward via QSequentialIterable and
> QAssociativeIterable. But deserialization is currently possible only by
> QMetaType::registerConverter. I think, that this is would be so nice to
> have an ability to create a container via QVariant from collection of
> QVariant instances without a need for custom converters.
> ~
> QList<QVariant> variantContainer;
> variantContainer.append(QVariant(123));
> variantContainer.append(QVariant(321));
> QVariant variant(QVariant::fromValue(variantContainer));
> QVariant containerVariant(variant.convert(qMetaTypeId<QList<int> >()));
> ~

This is a very lossy conversion without sufficient error reporting. That's an 
example of why I don't think we should invest more time in this type of API.

> And so I have stumbled into a problem. QSequentialIterable  and
> QAssociativeIterable related code is scattered across <qvariant.h> and
> <qmetatype.h>. All related conversions are conveyed in templates, instead
> of
> https://code.qt.io/cgit/qt/qtbase.git/tree/src/corelib/kernel/qvariant.cpp#n
> 387 .
> I just don't feel, that further
> https://code.qt.io/cgit/qt/qtbase.git/tree/src/corelib/kernel/qvariant.h#n78
> 2 and
> https://code.qt.io/cgit/qt/qtbase.git/tree/src/corelib/kernel/qmetatype.h#n1
> 121 development
> is the way to go.

Nor I. That code is black magic to me and I don't touch it.

> And so the question is: should I try to refactor sequential and associative
> iterators, so templates are used only to staticaly gather information about
> containers and conversions are made in qvariant.cpp, where they belong?

I suggest you leave it alone.

> It also would be nice to hear, if someone acknowledges this conversion
> feature to be of use.

-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
  Software Architect - Intel System Software Products