I'm making a game (see http://haighshroom.blogspot.com for context) and saving/loading the game using an XML file. It currently uses a different struct for the save format of each class, but continuing to update the save file structure is proving tiresome so I want to try and adopt the following generalised method.
Let's assume I have 3 classes, which all inherit from BaseClass:
Class1, which has Property1, Property2 (let's say all properties are ints)
Class2, which has Property2, Property3
Class3, which has Property1, Property3
Now my new generalised SaveStruct would look like this:
public struct EntityStruct
{
public string ClassName;
public int Property1;
public int Property2;
public int Property3;
public EntityStruct()
{
ClassName = "";
Property1 = Property2 = Property3 = 0;
}
}
When saving/loading a particular entity, I want to achieve the following Pseudocode (both functions called from BaseClass):
public EntityStruct GetSaveStruct()
{
EntityStruct es = new EntityStruct();
es.ClassName = this.GetType().Name;
if Exists(this.Property1) es.Property1 = Get(this.Property1);
if Exists(this.Property2) es.Property2 = Get(this.Property2);
if Exists(this.Property3) es.Property3 = Get(this.Property3);
}
public void LoadFromStruct(EntityStruct es)
{
BaseClass e = (BaseClass)(Activator.CreateInstance(null, GV.NameSpace + es.ClassName).Unwrap());
if Exists(e.Property1) Set(e.Property1 = es.Property1);
if Exists(e.Property2) Set(e.Property2 = es.Property2);
if Exists(e.Property3) Set(e.Property3 = es.Property3);
}
The parts I don't know how to define are:
-Exists(e.Property1) - this needs to use Reflection to determine whether the instance e has Property1 defined (we are calling this from BaseClass so we don't know without using Reflection).
-Get(e.Property1) - if Property 1 does exist for an instance e, we need to get its value
-Set(e.Property1 = es.Property1) - if Property 1 does exist from an instance e, we need to set its value
Many thanks.