Asio two way communication with peristence socket - c++

Question

I have this requirement where my app have to connect to another app via sockets and will have to maintain persistent connection for quiet long time. My app will be a TCP client and the other is a TCP server. My app will send commands and the server will respond accordingly.
The problem am facing right now is how to read the whole data from server a string and return for app which will issue the next command. Reading synchronously (with asio::read) looked like a good option up until I observed socket hanging up until I terminate the server. Looking at the documentation I found that the library is correctly working.
his function is used to read a certain number of bytes of data from a stream. The call will block until one of the following conditions is true:
1. The supplied buffers are full. That is, the bytes transferred is equal to the sum of the buffer sizes.
2. An error occurred.
The problem is I don't know correct buffer size as the response from the server varies. So If I put a too small buffer it returns fine but missing some data. If I put too big it will hang forever until server quits.
So I thought I would do the async reading. It works only once and I don't know how to make it fetch data until whole data it read.
here is the relevant async code
#define ASIO_STANDALONE 1
#include <iostream>
#include <asio.hpp>
int main()
{
asio::io_context context;
size_t reply_length;
size_t length = 1024;
std::vector<char> buffer;
//create socket
asio::ip::tcp::socket socket(context);
socket.connect(asio::ip::tcp::endpoint(asio::ip::address::from_string("127.0.0.1"), 8088));
std::string dataOut = "list --files"; //some command to write
std::error_code error;
asio::write(socket, asio::buffer(dataOut), error);
if (!error)
{
std::cout << "Receiving...!" << std::endl;
buffer.resize(length);
asio::async_read(socket, asio::buffer(buffer), [&buffer, &context](const asio::error_code &ec, std::size_t bytes_transferred) {
std::copy(buffer.begin(), buffer.end(), std::ostream_iterator<char>(std::cout, ""));
std::cout << "\nRead total of:" << bytes_transferred << "\n";
context.run();
});
}
else
{
std::cout << "send failed: " << error.message() << std::endl;
}
context.run();
}
Searching didn't help much solving my issue.
So my question is, how can I read all the data in a persistent socket with asio? Am not using boost.

Answer 1

You need to loop async_read calls. If you don't want your client to hang on read operation you can define the smallest possible buffer i.e. 1 byte.
Define function which takes socket, buffer and two additional parameters according to async_read's handler signature, and this function calls itself with async_read to make the loop of async_read calls - it reads until some error occures:
void onRead (
asio::ip::tcp::socket& socket,
std::array<char,1>& buf,
const system::error_code& ec,
std::size_t bytes)
{
if (ec)
{
if (ec == asio::error::eof && bytes == 1)
std::cout << buf[0];
return;
}
std::cout << buf[0];
asio::async_read(socket,asio::buffer(buf),
std::bind(onRead, std::ref(socket), std::ref(buf),
std::placeholders::_1, // error code
std::placeholders::_2)); // transferred bytes
}
and the changes in main:
std::array<char,1> buf;
asio::write(socket, asio::buffer(dataOut), error);
if (!error)
{
std::cout << "Receiving...!" << std::endl;
asio::async_read(socket, asio::buffer(buf),
std::bind(onRead, std::ref(socket), std::ref(buf),
std::placeholders::_1,
std::placeholders::_2));
context.run();
}
else
{
std::cout << "send failed: " << error.message() << std::endl;
}
(I am using Boost, so you should replace system::error_code on asio::error_code).