Question

I have a problem concerning boost asio libraries. I successfully tried to create a socket between a client and a server, this involves creation of resolvers in order to specify ip and port to the server (the server only requires port) and other objects, but, most importantly, it is necessary to use write and read_some as functions to read and write from/in the socket.
I would really appreciate to use a stream, and this is possible in boost asio, but that’s strange…
In almost all examples using streams, to create a server it is necessary to provide port, ok, let’s talk about the client… client side, it is necessary to use the iostream constructor to specify coordinates for connecting the stream, here’s the code:

tcp::iostream() s(argv[1], "daytime");

Well, I don’t really understand what is passed in the first parameter and really don’t know what daytime might ever represent…
Basically, here, I’m telling: “Hey stream, you must connect to this server…” but how can I specify ip and port of that server?
Note that, on the opposite, everything is almost clear server side:

boost::asio::io_service io_s;
tcp::acceptor acc(io_s, tcp::endpoint(tcp::v4(), 1950));
for (;;) {
   tcp::iostream stream;
   acc.accept(*stream.rdbuf());
   stream << "Message" << std::endl;
}

Using this model, I would like to use

stream << mymessage_to_send << std::endl;
stream >> a_string_containing_my_message;

in order to send and receive.
How can I do this?
Thank you very much.

Answer 1

I’ve written a client/server system using Boost.Asio. The source is available on GitHub: Client.cpp and Server.cpp. Using Boost.Serialization together with Boost.Asio allows me to send arbitrary datastructures over the wire. I must say it is quite impressive!