externalize

Description:

[ CCode ( returns_floating_reference = true ) ]
public Variant externalize ()

Build an externalized form of this which can be used together with parse_external to rebuild a copy of this.

It is important to note that the variant returned from this method does not have the same type signature as returned from a call to serialize. Externalization will wrap the serialized data in a container format with versioning information and headers with type information.

Parameters:

this	The instance to externalize

Returns:

A floating reference to a Variant with the externalized data.