I'm trying to have a file automatically close when a deadline_timer is expired. Seeing that a file is no longer open, another file will get created and a timer started.

But I'm having some issues understanding deadline_timer. I believe the io.run() in start_timer blocks (thinking that async_wait shouldn't block), so I tried to put it on it's own thread so that my main would continue to loop and write to the file while a timer is running in the background which would eventually close the file.

Anyone see where I'm going wrong?


---
void MyFileTimer::start_timer()
{
    ba::deadline_timer timer(io, boost::posix_time::seconds(10));

    timer.async_wait(boost::bind(&MyFileTimer::timer_expired, this, _1));

    t_thread = unique_ptr<boost::thread>(
        new boost::thread(boost::bind(&ba::io_service::run, &io)));

    io.run();
}


void MyFileTimer::timer_expired(const boost::system::error_code& e)
{  
    // Closing file

    my_file.flush();
    my_file.close();

    io.reset();

    t_thread->join();
}

bool MyFileTimer::create_file()
{
    // ...
    string filename = my_unique_file_name;

    my_file.open(filename, ios::out);

    start_timer();

    return true;
}