Serializing QHash to QByteArray - qt

Question

I am trying to serialize a QHash object and store it in a QByteArray (to be sent using QUDPSocket or QTCPSocket).
My current attempt looks like this:
// main.cpp
#include <QtCore/QCoreApplication>
#include <QHash>
#include <QVariant>
#include <QDebug>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
QHash<QString,QVariant> hash;
hash.insert("Key1",1);
hash.insert("Key2","thing2");
QByteArray ba;
QDataStream ds(&ba, QIODevice::WriteOnly);
ds << hash;
qDebug() << ds;
}
When this runs I get this out of qDebug():
QIODevice::read: WriteOnly device
QIODevice::read: WriteOnly device
QIODevice::read: WriteOnly device
QVariant(, )
The documentation says that this should write to the byte array, but obviously that isn't happening here. What am I doing wrong?
Qt 4.7.1 on OS-X
Thanks!
-J

Answer 1

The reason it is failing is because it is trying to read from a write-only stream. The sequence is:
qDebug() << ds;
--> QVariant::QVariant(QDataStream &s)
--> QDataStream& operator>>(QDataStream &s, QVariant &p)
--> void QVariant::load(QDataStream &s)
That last method (and some more downstream) try to read from the data stream to convert its contents into a QVariant for display in qDebug. In other words, your actual code is fine; the debugging check is causing the failure.
You could check the contents of the byte array with something like:
qDebug() << ba.length() << ba.toHex();

Answer 2

You can Implement you program like this code:
QHash<QString,QVariant> options;
options["string"] = "my string";
options["bool"] = true;
QByteArray ar;
//Serializing
QDataStream out(&ar,QIODevice::WriteOnly); // write the data
out << options;
//setting a new value
options["string"] = "new string";
//Deserializing
// read the data serialized from the file
QDataStream in(&ar,QIODevice::ReadOnly);
in >> options;
qDebug() << "value: " << options.value("string");
ref