Boost ASIO echo TCP asynchronous server

Let's refactor the echo TCP server to achieve asynchrony. It's going to be a lot of fun. If you feel that it is too much fun, you could maybe have first a look at the similar but a bit simpler asynchronous server discussed in a previous post.

Main

This server works with the same clients as seen for the synchronous server, here we deal just with the server. All the job is delegated to the Server class, whose constructor gets a reference to the application ASIO I/O context.

namespace ba = boost::asio;
// ...

Server server(io);
io.run();

Server

The server ctor initialize its own acceptor on the ASIO I/O context on the endpoint specifying the TCP IP protocol and port chosen, then it calls its private member method accept():

using ba::ip::tcp;
// ...

const uint16_t ECHO_PORT = 50'014;
// ...

class Server
{
private:
 tcp::acceptor acceptor_;

 void accept()
 {
  acceptor_.async_accept([this](bs::error_code ec, tcp::socket socket)  // 1
  {
   if (!ec)
   {
    std::make_shared<Session>(std::move(socket))->read();  // 2
   }
   accept();  // 3
  });
 }
public:
 Server(ba::io_context& io) : acceptor_(io, tcp::endpoint(tcp::v4(), ECHO_PORT))
 {
  accept();
 }
};

1. As handler to async_accept() is a lambda that gets as parameters an error code that let us know if the connection from the client has been accepted correctly, and the socket eventually created to support the connection itself.
2. A beautiful and perplexing line. We create a shared_prt smart pointer to a Session created from a rvalue reference to the socket received as parameter, and call on it its read() method. However this anonymous variable exits its definition block on the next line, so its life is in danger - better see what is going on in read(). Actually, we are in danger, too. If something weird happens in this session object, we don't have any way to do anything about.
3. As soon as a Session object is created, a new call to accept() is issued, an so the server puts itself in wait for a new client connection.

Session

As we have seen just above, we should expect some clever trick from Session, especially in its read() method. Thinking better about it, it is not a big surprise seeing that its superclass is enable_shared_from_this:

class Session : public std::enable_shared_from_this<Session>
{
private:
 tcp::socket socket_;
 char data_[MAX_LEN];

// ...
public:
 Session(tcp::socket socket) : socket_(std::move(socket)) {}  // 1

 void read()  // 2
 {
  std::shared_ptr<Session> self{ shared_from_this() };  // 3
  socket_.async_read_some(ba::buffer(data_), [self](bs::error_code ec, std::size_t len) {  // 4
   if (!ec)
   {
    self->write(len);
   }
  });
 }
};

1. The ctor gets in the socket that we seen was created by the acceptor and moved in, in its turn, the constructor moves it to its data member.
2. The apparently short lived Session object created by the handler of async_accept() calls this method.
3. A new shared_ptr is created from this! Actually, being such, it is the same shared_prt that we have seen in the calling handler, just its use counter increased. However, our object is still not safe, we need to keep it alive until the complete read-write cycle between client and server is completed.
4. We read asynchronously some bytes from the client. To better see the effect, I have set the size of the data buffer to a silly low value. But the more interesting part here is the handler passed to async_read_some(). Notice that in the capture clause of the lambda we pass self, the shared pointer from this. So our object is safe till the end of the read.

So far so good. Just remember to ensure the object doesn't get invalidated during the writing process:

void write(std::size_t len)
{
 std::shared_ptr<Session> self{ shared_from_this() };
 ba::async_write(socket_, ba::buffer(data_, len), [self](bs::error_code ec, std::size_t) {
  if (!ec)
  {
   self->read();
  }
 });
}

Same as in read(), we ensure "this" stays alive creating a shared pointer from it, and passing it to the async_write() handler.

As required, as the read-write terminates, "this" has no more live references. Bye, bye, session.

I have pushed my C++ source file to GitHub. And here is the link to the original example from Boost ASIO.