How should I serialize a struct containing unordered_maps?

General JUCE discussion
1

I’m building a plugin that allows me to convert a single incoming MIDI note into multiple outgoing MIDI notes with specific velocities. I’m using this to quickly set up lighting for songs using a MIDI->DMX box I have.

I have the basic structure working. Basically, I have a map from midi note to output notes. There’s a single level of indirection though. Each note maps to a set of Light/Colors. So a single incoming note can output multiple notes per light. I’ll paste my map structs below.

struct Light {
    //Defines notes used for each light

    //Master dimmer note
    int dimmer;

    //Red note
    int r;
    //Green note
    int g;
    //Blue note
    int b;


    Light(int dimmer, int r, int g, int b) : dimmer(dimmer), r(r), g(g), b(b) {};
};

struct LightColor {
    float dimmer;
    float r;
    float g;
    float b;
    
    LightColor(float dimmer, float r, float g, float b) : dimmer(dimmer),r(r), g(g), b(b) {};
};






struct HotkeyOutput {
    std::string lightID;
    LightColor color;

    HotkeyOutput(std::string lightID, LightColor color) : lightID(lightID), color(color) {    };
};

struct RawHotkeyOutput {
    int note;
    float velocity;
    RawHotkeyOutput(int note, float velocity) : note(note), velocity(velocity) {};
};

class HotkeyMap {
public:
    std::unordered_map<int, std::vector<HotkeyOutput>> entries;
    std::unordered_map<std::string, Light> lights;
    HotkeyMap();
    std::vector<RawHotkeyOutput> getOutputs(int note);
};

This set up works well so far. I can hardcode in some lights and hotkeys, and when I build and test the plugin it works great. One note becomes either 4 or 8 depending on how many lights I have defined for that specific hotkey.

What I need help with is serializing this data somehow. I plan on making a gui for creating these hotkeys and light definitions inside the plugin. The top level struct I need to serialize/deserialize is HotkeyMap. It contains all the hotkey and light definitions.

Is there a built in way to save this struct to disk, or do I need to do this myself?

Edit: I’m beginning to work on the gui now too. I’m looking at the PropertiesDemo to see how to populate listboxes, and I’m seeing a lot of uses of juce::Array. Will I need to change my HotkeyMap to use juce collections instead of std::unordered_map and std::vector in order to make the GUI possible?

Thanks in advance!

2

I believe you could make it work with vectors and structs, but if you want to use the built in JUCE stuff for serialization and list boxes, then you might want to look at Value Trees of Arrays of vars. You can also get undo/redo included that way.