RealmObject as a byte array

[lbensaad]

Goal

1 - Convert a RealmObject to byte[]
2 - Convert a byte[] to RealmObject

In order to save any ReamlObject to a file I think it should be converted first to a byte[] in internal implementation of Realm. So, is it possible to expose that byte[] to use it in Java,

Expected Results

if a class User extends RealmObject, I want to be able to convert any User object to byte[] and vice versa like this
User user = new User(id,name, email);
byte[] userData = user.toByteArray();
User user2 = new User(userData);

[cmelchior]

Hi @lbensaad. I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to accomplish?

Realm will automatically serialise the object to disk, this is not something you as a user of Realm have to do.

If you want to serialize the object yourself for some reason I would probably recommend using GSON or some other JSON library, since storing the binary representation of a Realm Object has a high chance of not working as you expect since data in Realm is exposed through Proxy classes that are not easily serializable.

[lbensaad]

Thanks @cmelchior. I need it to send the object over the network to the server after it is stored locally in Realm. But as you said, the server will not know how to deserialize them. I just did not want to add a serialization library, but this seems inevitable. I will see how to use Flatbuffers with Realm without creating intermediate objects.

[Zhuinden]

@lbensaad why not JSON?

[lbensaad]

@Zhuinden, I think binary is faster in parsing and smaller than JSON

[nhachicha]

@lbensaad have you thought about using realm-mobile-platform
The object will be synced so you don't have to worry about serialising or networking.

[lbensaad]

Yes @nhachicha, but it is payable, I do not want to use it, I am trying gRPC

[dalinaum]

Hello @nhachicha

Although binary is faster and smaller than JSON, it seems hard to support by Realm. Supporting toByteArray method may require Realm to assume some binary representations and invest time and effort to maintain them.

I think the practical answer is to create a converter that converts between JSONs and binaries.

[nhachicha]

@lbensaad Developer Edition is free though, I think it covers your use case.

[lbensaad]

@dalinaum I think the function toByteArray is already implemented in the internals of Realm, I just wanted them to expose it in the API.
Thanks brother @nhachicha, but for me it will be expansive in production. I have a website that has 10k visitors per day, and I am converting it to app because 70% of the visitors are using mobile (Android), and it may grow bigger. So I prefer to invest some extra time now developing the server side rather than to be bound to a life time payment.
I am still testing gRPC, but I think it will be perfect as it will save my time writing the net protocole, but I will need some extra code to convert from protobuf to RealmObject, that is all. if RealmObject exposes the toByteArray, then I will not need that extra conversion code.
That is why I asked of that function. just to use it when sending object over the net.