CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++boostboost-asio
user1676145
user1676145

Reputation: 23

Can I use Boost::Asio and not worry about network programming problems?

I have to make a server in my current project but I don't have any or little experience in this area. My question is, can I just use Asio in my project and it will simply handle any problems a normal server has to face (partial reads, multithreading problems, ...)?

(My server will have to handle hundreds of clients at the same time)

Upvotes: 2

Views: 271

Answers (2)

chrisaycock
chrisaycock

Reputation: 37930

Asio is intentionally not multithreaded. It handles concurrency by multiplexing via the operating system's select(), kqueue, epoll, or other mechanism.

As for partial receives, there is no automatic way to get TCP to respect message boundaries. Asio can't do anything about that, so you'll need some technique at the application level to indicate completion. HTTP traditionally handles this by closing the socket when it's finished, though it's also possible to pre-send the size of the message.

Upvotes: 2

Kerrek SB
Kerrek SB

Reputation: 477150

ASIO takes care of the low-level socket programming and polling code. You still have to provide all the functionality to process raw network data. Ultimately, you get an unpredictable number of bytes from the network any time a read callback is called, and it is up to you to take those bytes and reconstruct your application message from them.

But indeed, as far as receiving an unspecified number of bytes is concerned, you won't have to worry about how that is implemented.

Multithreading is "easy" in the sense that you can run the ASIO processor multiple times concurrently, but it is your responsibility to provide a read callback that can deal with being run multiple times at once.

Upvotes: 4

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