Externalising

The process of externalising an object involves externalising its data to a stream.

For a class instance, this involves externalising each of its data members and components to a stream. This process is encapsulated by the ExternalizeL() member function of the class.

A class always defines ExternalizeL() as:

      
       
      
      void ExternalizeL(RWriteStream& aStream) const;
     

and uses the write stream interface class RWriteStream .

Note that ExternalizeL() is not virtual and there is no implication that a class that requires an ExternalizeL() function must be derived from any particular base class.