...one of the most highly
regarded and expertly designed C++ library projects in the
world.
— Herb Sutter and Andrei
Alexandrescu, C++
Coding Standards
In Boost.Asio, an asynchronous operation is initiated by a function that
is named with the prefix async_
.
These functions will be referred to as initiating functions.
All initiating functions in Boost.Asio take a function object meeting handler requirements as the
final parameter. These handlers accept as their first parameter an lvalue
of type const error_code
.
Implementations of asynchronous operations in Boost.Asio may call the application
programming interface (API) provided by the operating system. If such an
operating system API call results in an error, the handler will be invoked
with a const error_code
lvalue that evaluates to true. Otherwise the handler will be invoked with
a const error_code
lvalue that evaluates to false.
Unless otherwise noted, when the behaviour of an asynchronous operation is
defined "as if" implemented by a POSIX function,
the handler will be invoked with a value of type error_code
that corresponds to the failure condition described by POSIX
for that function, if any. Otherwise the handler will be invoked with an
implementation-defined error_code
value that reflects the operating system error.
Asynchronous operations will not fail with an error condition that indicates
interruption by a signal (POSIX EINTR
).
Asynchronous operations will not fail with any error condition associated
with non-blocking operations (POSIX EWOULDBLOCK
,
EAGAIN
or EINPROGRESS
;
Windows WSAEWOULDBLOCK
or WSAEINPROGRESS
).
All asynchronous operations have an associated io_service
object. Where the initiating function is a member function, the associated
io_service
is that returned
by the get_io_service()
member function on the same object. Where the initiating function is not
a member function, the associated io_service
is that returned by the get_io_service()
member function of the first argument to
the initiating function.
Arguments to initiating functions will be treated as follows:
— If the parameter is declared as a const reference or by-value, the program is not required to guarantee the validity of the argument after the initiating function completes. The implementation may make copies of the argument, and all copies will be destroyed no later than immediately after invocation of the handler.
— If the parameter is declared as a non-const reference, const pointer or non-const pointer, the program must guarantee the validity of the argument until the handler is invoked.
The library implementation is only permitted to make calls to an initiating function's arguments' copy constructors or destructors from a thread that satisfies one of the following conditions:
— The thread is executing any member function of the associated io_service
object.
— The thread is executing the destructor of the associated io_service
object.
— The thread is executing one of the io_service
service access functions use_service
,
add_service
or has_service
, where the first argument is
the associated io_service
object.
— The thread is executing any member function, constructor or destructor of
an object of a class defined in this clause, where the object's get_io_service()
member function returns the associated io_service
object.
— The thread is executing any function defined in this clause, where any argument
to the function has an get_io_service()
member function that returns the associated
io_service
object.
The io_service
object associated
with an asynchronous operation will have unfinished work, as if by maintaining
the existence of one or more objects of class io_service::work
constructed using the io_service
,
until immediately after the handler for the asynchronous operation has been
invoked.
When an asynchronous operation is complete, the handler for the operation will be invoked as if by:
bch
for the handler, as described below.
ios.post(bch)
to schedule the handler for deferred invocation, where ios
is the associated io_service
.
This implies that the handler must not be called directly from within the initiating function, even if the asynchronous operation completes immediately.
A bound completion handler is a handler object that contains a copy of a
user-supplied handler, where the user-supplied handler accepts one or more
arguments. The bound completion handler does not accept any arguments, and
contains values to be passed as arguments to the user-supplied handler. The
bound completion handler forwards the asio_handler_allocate()
, asio_handler_deallocate()
, and asio_handler_invoke()
calls to the corresponding functions for
the user-supplied handler. A bound completion handler meets the requirements
for a completion handler.
For example, a bound completion handler for a ReadHandler
may be implemented as follows:
template<class ReadHandler> struct bound_read_handler { bound_read_handler(ReadHandler handler, const error_code& ec, size_t s) : handler_(handler), ec_(ec), s_(s) { } void operator()() { handler_(ec_, s_); } ReadHandler handler_; const error_code ec_; const size_t s_; }; template<class ReadHandler> void* asio_handler_allocate(size_t size, bound_read_handler<ReadHandler>* this_handler) { using boost::asio::asio_handler_allocate; return asio_handler_allocate(size, &this_handler->handler_); } template<class ReadHandler> void asio_handler_deallocate(void* pointer, std::size_t size, bound_read_handler<ReadHandler>* this_handler) { using boost::asio::asio_handler_deallocate; asio_handler_deallocate(pointer, size, &this_handler->handler_); } template<class F, class ReadHandler> void asio_handler_invoke(const F& f, bound_read_handler<ReadHandler>* this_handler) { using boost::asio::asio_handler_invoke; asio_handler_invoke(f, &this_handler->handler_); }
If the thread that initiates an asynchronous operation terminates before the associated handler is invoked, the behaviour is implementation-defined. Specifically, on Windows versions prior to Vista, unfinished operations are cancelled when the initiating thread exits.
The handler argument to an initiating function defines a handler identity.
That is, the original handler argument and any copies of the handler argument
will be considered equivalent. If the implementation needs to allocate storage
for an asynchronous operation, the implementation will perform asio_handler_allocate(size, &h)
, where size
is the required size in bytes, and h
is the handler. The implementation will perform asio_handler_deallocate(p,
size,
&h)
, where p
is a pointer to the storage, to deallocate the storage prior to the invocation
of the handler via asio_handler_invoke
.
Multiple storage blocks may be allocated for a single asynchronous operation.
By default, initiating functions return void
.
This is always the case when the handler is a function pointer, C++11 lambda,
or a function object produced by boost::bind
or std::bind
.
For other types, the return type may be customised via a two-step process:
handler_type
template, which
is used to determine the true handler type based on the asynchronous
operation's handler's signature.
async_result
template, which
is used both to determine the return type and to extract the return value
from the handler.
These two templates have been specialised to provide support for stackful
coroutines and the C++11 std::future
class.
As an example, consider what happens when enabling std::future
support by using the boost::asio::use_future
special value, as in:
std::future<std::size_t> length = my_socket.async_read_some(my_buffer, boost::asio::use_future);
When a handler signature has the form:
void handler(error_code ec, result_type result);
the initiating function returns a std::future
templated on result_type
.
In the above async_read_some
example, this is std::size_t
. If the asynchronous operation fails,
the error_code
is converted
into a system_error
exception
and passed back to the caller through the future.
Where a handler signature has the form:
void handler(error_code ec);
the initiating function instead returns std::future<void>
.