[Boost-users] [asio] Using asio for asynchronous event processing

Subject: [Boost-users] [asio] Using asio for asynchronous event processing
From: Edward Diener (eldiener_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-05-27 20:40:16

I do not understand the documentation for asio, or even if it pertains 
to the programming problem I am trying to solve. The doc, for whatever 
reason, is poor regarding practical use. But rather than complain about 
the doc I will ask a specific problem related to what I am trying to do 
and hopefully someone can help me or point me to something in the doc by 
which I can understand how to use asio for my problem.

I need to design generalized asynchronous events triggered by an event 
source and handled by an event handler. The event source would trigger 
an event declared as a callable object, as in boost::function, and an 
event handler would eventually handle the event asynchronously. The 
event source and the event handler would be in different threads of an 
application but not in different applications.

The event source triggers the event but does not block in any way 
waiting for the event to be processed. The event source may subsequently 
trigger other asynchronous events to be eventually handled in the same 
way without blocking.

The event handler is able to check for events periodically from within 
its own thread.

Each event itself could be a totally different callable object, but the 
event source and the event handler both know the callable prototype for 
any given event. The event source and the event handler are completely 
disconnected in that neither knows about the other. For any given 
asynchronous event there may be any number of event handlers when an 
event is triggered.

Can I use asio to implement such a solution ?

The doc suggests that asio does not only deal in i/o events, such as 
networking and sockets, but I could not understand whether it deals in 
generalized asynchronous operations or not. The proactor pattern is 
understandable but there appears to be nothing in the doc which connects 
the elements of the proactor pattern to classes in asio. The basic 
tutorial as well as the sockets tutorial does not enlighten me at all. 
Hopefully someone here can help.