RE: [boost] additional boost libraries?

From: Reece Dunn (msclrhd_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-07-20 07:01:55

Aleksander Demko wrote:
>I, like billions of other developers, have a medium sized project
>that for various reasons, invented its own thread, io, etc
>libraries. I'm thinkin of switching over to boost stuff for all my
>utility needs, but I'm wondering if boost has/possibly will have/is
>open to the possibility of adding/ or will never have the following
>facilities:
>
>  serialization/object persistance (via iostreams)

I am not sure if the Boost.Serialization library supports this, you'd need 
to ask Robert Ramey. I have a library in the sandbox (outfmt) that supports 
I/O of the standard containers and several boost constructs (e.g. 
contained_pair) for sequential types. I am currently in the process of 
overhauling the documentation and tests ready for the upcoming review.

>  network socket iostreams

Check out Jonathan Turkanis's IOStreams library (pending review). As far as 
I am aware, this makes it easier to write custom I/O streams. You will 
probably need to implement the socket code for it, but there might be a 
Boost library that does that.

>  interface to dlls/.so loading

I am not sure about these. I think the thread library provides something 
like this to perform thread cleanup, but you'd need to ask one of the 
Boost.Thread people.

>  url parsing (something like the filesystem lib)

It should be possible to use Boost.Spirit to write a URL grammar. URL 
handling would be a good extension to the filesystem library, although I am 
not sure if/how it is possible.

>and, just out of curiosity:
>  xml/html parsing

It is possible to use Boost.Spirit for this. If you check out the Spirit 
repository 
(http://spirit.sourceforge.net/repository/applications/show_contents.php) 
you will find several examples. Also, if you want a SAX-based parser, 
contact me off-list and I'll e-mail the parser I have been working on. NOTE: 
my parser does not check tag/element name validity, but does perform basic 
structural clean-up.

Regards,
Reece

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