Boost.asio, async_read and socket kind - c++

I have a client/server application that is trying to read. When reading from the client, it is done asynchronously. It seems that async_read on the client side is failing.
I think that my client is trying to async_read before the server does the corresponding async_write (not completely sure). So my questions here are conceptual:
can I async_read before the corresponding async_write to the socket on the server side has been done?
I am not sure (cannot try right now), but seems that the kind of socket (blocking/non-blocking) changes the behavior of 1.
In case I want to use non-blocking sockets, how can I async_read when I know there is data available? Is the bytes_readable or similar what I am looking for?
Thank you very much. I would appreciate confirmation on my 3 questions, since I have been trying many things for a while and I have little time to try further experiments.

can I async_read before the corresponding async_write to the socket on the server side has been done?
Yes.
I am not sure (cannot try right now), but seems that the kind of socket (blocking/non-blocking) changes the behavior of 1.
Quite possibly, but you shouldn't put the socket into non-blocking mode. Asynchronous I/O is a third I/O model, nothing to do with non-blocking mode.
In case I want to use non-blocking sockets, how can I async_read when I know there is data available?
This is a contradiction in terms. Asynchronous I/O starts the operation and provides a rendezvous when it finishes. The operation itself remains blocking, but not to the async caller. If you want to use non-blocking sockets you should not be also attempting to use asynchronous I/O.

Related

accept a socket in one thread and write data in different thread [duplicate]

I am implementing a simple server, that accepts a single connection and then uses that socket to simultaneously read and write messages from the read and write threads.
What is the safe and easy way to simultaneously read and write from the same socket descriptor in c/c++ on linux?
I dont need to worry about multiple threads read and writing from the same socket as there will be a single dedicated read and single dedicated write thread writing to the socket.
In the above scenario, is any kind of locking required?
Does the above scenario require non blocking socket?
Is there any opensource library, that would help in the above scenario?
In the above scenario, is any kind of locking required?
None.
Does the above scenario require non blocking socket?
The bit you're probably worried about - the read/recv and write/send threads on an established connection - do not need to be non-blocking if you're happy for those threads to sit there waiting to complete. That's normally one of the reasons you'd use threads rather than select, epoll, async operations, or io_uring - keeps the code simpler too.
If the thread accepting new clients is happy to block in the call to accept(), then you're all good there too.
Still, there's one subtle issue with TCP servers you might want to keep in the back of your mind... if your program grows to handle multiple clients and have some periodic housekeeping to do. It's natural and tempting to use a select or epoll call with a timeout to check for readability on the listening socket - which indicates a client connection attempt - then accept the connection. There's a race condition there: the client connection attempt may have dropped between select() and accept(), in which case accept() will block if the listening socket's not non-blocking, and that can prevent a timely return to the select() loop and halt the periodic on-timeout processing until another client connects.
Is there any opensource library, that would help in the above scenario?
There are hundreds of libraries for writing basic servers (and asking for 3rd party lib recommendations is off-topic on SO so I won't get into it), but ultimately what you've asked for is easily achieved atop an OS-provided BSD sockets API or the Windows bastardisation ("winsock").
Sockets are BI-DIRECTIONAL. If you've ever actually dissected an Ethernet or Serial cable or seen the low-level hardware wiring diagram for them, you can actually SEE distinct copper wires for the "TX" (transmit) and "RX" (receive) lines. The software for sending the signals, from the device controller up to most OS APIs for a 'socket', reflects this and it is the key difference between a socket and an ordinary pipe on most systems (e.g. Linux).
To really get the most out of sockets, you need:
1) Async IO support that uses IO Completion Ports, epoll(), or some similar async callback or event system to 'wake up' whenever data comes in on the socket. This then must call your lowest-level 'ReadData' API to read the message off the socket connection.
2) A 2nd API that supports the low-level writes, a 'WriteData' (transmit) that pushes bytes onto the socket and does not depend on anything the 'ReadData' logic needs. Remember, your send and receive are independent even at the hardware level, so don't introduce locking or other synchronization at this level.
3) A pool of Socket IO threads, which blindly do any processing of data that is read from or will be written to a socket.
4) PROTOCOL CALLBACK: A callback object the socket threads have smart pointers to. It handles any PROTOCOL layer- such as parsing your data blob into a real HTTP request- that sits on top of the basic socket connection. Remember, a socket is just a data pipe between computers and data sent over it will often arrive as a series of fragments- the packets. In protocols like UDP the packets aren't even in order. The low-level 'ReadData' and 'WriteData' will callback from their threads into here, because it is where content-aware data processing actually begins.
5) Any callbacks the protocol handler itself needs. For HTTP, you package the raw request buffers into nice objects that you hand off to a real servlet, which should return a nice response object that can be serialized into an HTTP spec-compliant response.
Notice the basic pattern: You have to make the whole system fundamentally async (an 'onion of callbacks') if you wish to take full advantage of bi-directional, async IO over sockets. The only way to read and write simultaneously to the socket is with threads, so you could still synchronize between a 'writer' and 'reader' thread, but I'd only do it if the protocol or other considerations forced my hand. The good news is that you can get great performance with sockets using highly async processing, the bad is that building such a system in a robust way is a serious effort.
You don't have to worry about it. One thread reading and one thread writing will work as you expect. Sockets are full duplex, so you can read while you write and vice-versa. You'd have to worry if you had multiple writers, but this is not the case.

is winsock2 thread safe?

I am writing a small 3 servers and 1 client program. the 2 servers send tcp messages and the last one sends upd datagrams using winsock2.
I am wondering if i can make simulanious recvfrom() by using threads (OpenMP or boost::threads) so that 2 threads listen from the same socket on the same port at the same time.
I am using VC++ 2010 on windows7.
Thank you for your help.
Yes, sockets are thread-safe, however you have to be careful. One common pattern (when using blocking IO) is to have one thread receiving data on a socket and another thread sending data on the same socket. Having multiple threads receiving data from a socket is usually fine for UDP socket, but doesn't make much sense for TCP sockets most of the time. There is a warning in the documentation for WSARecv:
WSARecv should not be called on the same socket simultaneously from
different threads, because it can result in an unpredictable buffer
order.
But this usually isn't of any concern if you are using UDP and the protocol is stateless.
Also note that the WSAEINPROGRESS error code mainly applies to Winsock 1.1:
WSAEINPROGRESS: A blocking Windows Sockets 1.1 call is in progress, or the service provider is still processing a callback function.
And the description of WSAEINPROGRESS further states:
Operation now in progress.
A blocking operation is currently executing. Windows Sockets only allows a single blocking operation—per- task or thread—to be outstanding, and if any other function call is made (whether or not it references that or any other socket) the function fails with the WSAEINPROGRESS error.
Note that this talks about a single blocking operation per-task or thread.
Furthermore there is an additional warning in the documentation for WSARecv:
Issuing another blocking Winsock call inside an APC that interrupted an ongoing blocking Winsock call on the same thread will lead to undefined behavior, and must never be attempted by Winsock clients.
But apart from those warnings you should be fine.
Update: to add some external references:
alt.winsock.programming: Is socket thread-safe?
and Winsock Programmer’s FAQ: Is Winsock thread-safe?
Winsock allows only one blocking IO call on a socket. More than one blocking call from different thread would end up with "WSAEINPROGRESS" error. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms740668%28v=vs.85%29.aspx#WSAEINPROGRESS.
If you want to make concurrent IO request you could try using asynchronous IO or overlapped IO (in windows parlance). But I guess you would want concurrent processing of data more than concurrent reading data. In which case you could have one thread issuing IO requests and others for processing.

boost asio: How to monitor that a tcp connection is alive

I have a asynchronous TCP/IP client using asio. When the connection is lost, my handle function of async_read recieve an error. So I'm informed that a connection is lost.
Now, I'm refactoring some legacy codes implementing a synchronous TCP/IP client where the abstract interface enforces this sequence: a synchronous write, then a synchronous read.
Doing that with asio is fairly easy, but I would like to know asynchronously if the connection is lost.
Is there a more elegant way than:
Option A:
Add a thread that checks if the socket is still alive (by trying to read... but how can I be sure that the read doesn't steal data from my synchronous read ? See Boost asio ip tcp iostream Error Detection)
Option B:
Use async_read instead and and emulate a synchronous read
I would imagine that the synchronous operation would fail just like the asynchronous one would. It might be more disruptive when the synchronous one fails though, since the timeout could be very long and much more noticeable when everything else has to wait on it.
You might want to look into enabling TCP keep-alives on your socket, and possibly lower the TCP keep alive interval, to detect a lost connection sooner.

Program structure for bi-directional TCP communication using Boost::Asio

First off, I hope my question makes sense and is even possible! From what I've read about TCP sockets and Boost::ASIO, I think it should be.
What I'm trying to do is to set up two machines and have a working bi-directional read/write link over TCP between them. Either party should be able to send some data to be used by the other party.
The first confusing part about TCP(/IP?) is that it requires this client/server model. However, reading shows that either side is capable of writing or reading, so I'm not yet completely discouraged. I don't mind establishing an arbitrary party as the client and the other as the server. In my application, that can be negotiated ahead of time and is not of concern to me.
Unfortunately, all of the examples I come across seem to focus on a client connecting to a server, and the server immediately sending some bit of data back. But I want the client to be able to write to the server also.
I envision some kind of loop wherein I call io_service.poll(). If the polling shows that the other party is waiting to send some data, it will call read() and accept that data. If there's nothing waiting in the queue, and it has data to send, then it will call write(). With both sides doing this, they should be able to both read and write to each other.
My concern is how to avoid situations in which both enter into some synchronous write() operation at the same time. They both have data to send, and then sit there waiting to send it on both sides. Does that problem just imply that I should only do asynchronous write() and read()? In that case, will things blow up if both sides of a connection try to write asynchronously at the same time?
I'm hoping somebody can ideally:
1) Provide a very high-level structure or best practice approach which could accomplish this task from both client and server perspectives
or, somewhat less ideally,
2) Say that what I'm trying to do is impossible and perhaps suggest a workaround of some kind.
What you want to do is absolutely possible. Web traffic is a good example of a situation where the "client" sends something long before the server does. I think you're getting tripped up by the words "client" and "server".
What those words really describe is the method of connection establishment. In the case of "client", it's "active" establishment; in the case of "server" it's "passive". Thus, you may find it less confusing to use the terms "active" and "passive", or at least think about them that way.
With respect to finding example code that you can use as a basis for your work, I'd strongly encourage you to take a look at W. Richard Stevens' "Unix Network Programming" book. Any edition will suffice, though the 2nd Edition will be more up to date. It will be only C, but that's okay, because the socket API is C only. boost::asio is nice, but it sounds like you might benefit from seeing some of the nuts and bolts under the hood.
My concern is how to avoid situations
in which both enter into some
synchronous write() operation at the
same time. They both have data to
send, and then sit there waiting to
send it on both sides. Does that
problem just imply that I should only
do asynchronous write() and read()? In
that case, will things blow up if both
sides of a connection try to write
asynchronously at the same time?
It sounds like you are somewhat confused about how protocols are used. TCP only provides a reliable stream of bytes, nothing more. On top of that applications speak a protocol so they know when and how much data to read and write. Both the client and the server writing data concurrently can lead to a deadlock if neither side is reading the data. One way to solve that behavior is to use a deadline_timer to cancel the asynchronous write operation if it has not completed in a certain amount of time.
You should be using asynchronous methods when writing a server. Synchronous methods are appropriate for some trivial client applications.
TCP is full-duplex, meaning you can send and receive data in the order you want. To prevent a deadlock in your own protocol (the high-level behaviour of your program), when you have the opportunity to both send and receive, you should receive as a priority. With epoll in level-triggered mode that looks like: epoll for send and receive, if you can receive do so, otherwise if you can send and have something to send do so. I don't know how boost::asio or threads fit here; you do need some measure of control on how sends and receives are interleaved.
The word you're looking for is "non-blocking", which is entirely different from POSIX asynchronous I/O (which involves signals).
The idea is that you use something like fcntl(fd,F_SETFL,O_NONBLOCK). write() will return the number of bytes successfully written (if positive) and both read() and write() return -1 and set errno = EAGAIN if "no progress can be made" (no data to read or write window full).
You then use something like select/epoll/kqueue which blocks until a socket is readable/writable (depending on the flags set).

How to abort winsock blocking call?

I use Winsock 2 in C++, and wonder how to make my server stop reading from the client connection. The reading thread gets blocked in recv() and I have no idea how to abort it. One way to do this is use non-blocking sockets with select(), but this thread has to wait before checking the new select().
What is the proper way to stop reading the socket?
To abort the blocking call to recv(), you can close the socket with closesocket() from another thread. Even if it's a bit ugly, it should work.
You can try to shutdown() the socket too (I never tested that).
If your program has other things to do besides working with socket I/O, you should not block in the first place.
You claim your thread must wait, but that's just a reflection of your program's current design. You should redesign it so it works with some form of non-blocking sockets. Every networking problem can be addressed using non-blocking sockets.
Since you're using Winsock, you have many alternatives here, not just select(). select() is a good choice only if your application must run on many platforms and you are unable to use the superior (but mutually incompatible) alternatives available on every modern platform.