Reading AnyPointer value

[nilya]

Hi Kenton,

It seems that capnp-message with AnyPointer value can be serialized, but can't be parsed.

1. to serialize you should first serialize AnyPointer value and add resulting Buffer to object that you serialize (am i right?).
2. parse code always returns undefined https://github.com/kentonv/node-capnp/blob/dc538dd4ce390a2615bd645f782c381033632123/src/node-capnp/capnp.cc#L1585

It will be good if parse method returned Buffer object ({ any: <Buffer ...> in the example, which can be parsed itself too) to be consistent with serialize api. Is this possible?

Example:

@0xdbb9ad1f14bf0b36;  # unique file ID, generated by `capnp id`

struct Person {
  any @0 :AnyPointer;
}

struct Date {
  year @0 :Int16;
  month @1 :UInt8;
  day @2 :UInt8;
}

var capnp = require("capnp");
var person = require('./person_any2.capnp');

var objDate = {
  year: 2014,
  month: 12,
  day: 1
}, obj = {
  any: capnp.serialize(person.Date, objDate)
};

var s = capnp.serialize(person.Person, obj);
console.log(s, s.length);

var o = capnp.parse(person.Person, s);
console.log(o);

Output is:

<SlowBuffer 00 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 de 07 0c 01 00 00 00 00> 32
{ any: undefined }

[kentonv]

Indeed, it looks like a missing implementation at capnp.cc:1586:

  case capnp::DynamicValue::ANY_POINTER:
    // TODO(soon):  How do we represent AnyPointer?
    return v8::Undefined();