Re: [boost] [asio]: extending asio

From: Christopher Kohlhoff (chris_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-09-11 07:43:09

Andreas Pokorny wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I would like to add more asynchronous event sources to asio, like:
> - input events for mouse, keyboard and joystick ..
> - window exposure, move, resize events in some generic form,
> - generic "quit" events
> - file alteration
> 
> With directFB/X11/Unix/Linux most of that can be done directly through
> select or epoll.
> But since reading the message and parsing events is mostly done
> by a third party library, I would only need the reactor part for these.
> Is this possible with asio?
>
> According to msdn it seems to be possible to create so called event
> objects for direct input devices. I am no win32 expert so I do not know
> if one can combine that with completion ports?

Asio is not really intended for those use cases as, in general, user 
interface events follow quite a different model to things like files and 
sockets. If you want to integrate events from these sources the easiest 
approach is probably to wait for them externally to asio and then use 
io_service::post() to execute the handlers (or alternatively write a 
custom asio service to do the same thing), but since you're not using 
asio for anything else it doesn't seem worth it to me. You're welcome to 
reuse any bits of asio that you find useful, though.

Cheers,
Chris