Handling of LPWSAOVERLAPPED after WSASend - c++

Question

I am currently writing a winsock server-side socket in managed C++. After creating the LPWSAOVERLAPPED object and passing it to the WSASend function, I do not see where to delete it when the operation completes nonblocking (WSASend returns SOCKET_ERROR and WSAGetLastError() returns WSA_IO_PENDING). My current solution was to create a System::Threading::WaitHandle, get the unsafe pointer to the wait handle and pass that onto hEvent under the LPWSAOVERLAPPED object. However, this is causing unnessecary object creation since I do not really care about when the send operation is completed. On the other hand, I need a LPWSAOVERLAPPED object in order to make the operation complete non-blocking. Does anyone have any better solution to solve this? Here is my current code:
void Connectivity::ConnectionInformation::SendData(unsigned char data[], const int length)
{
if (isClosed || sendError)
return;
Monitor::Enter(this->sendSyncRoot);
try
{
LPWSAOVERLAPPED overlapped = OverlappedObjectPool::GetOverlapped();
WaitHandle ^ handle = gcnew ManualResetEvent(false);
IntPtr handlePointer = handle->SafeWaitHandle->DangerousGetHandle();
sendInfo->buf = (char*)data;
sendInfo->len = length;
overlapped->Internal = 0;
overlapped->InternalHigh = 0;
overlapped->Offset = 0;
overlapped->OffsetHigh = 0;
overlapped->Pointer = 0;
overlapped->hEvent = (void*)handlePointer; //Set pointer
if (WSASend(connection, sendInfo, 1, NULL, 0, overlapped, NULL) == SOCKET_ERROR)
{
if (WSAGetLastError() == WSA_IO_PENDING)
{
ThreadPool::UnsafeRegisterWaitForSingleObject(handle, sentCallback, (IntPtr)((void*)overlapped), -1, true);
}
else
{
this->sendError = true;
//The send error bool makes sure that the close function doesn't get called
//during packet processing which could lead to a lot of null reffernce exceptions.
OverlappedObjectPool::GiveObject(overlapped);
}
}
else
{
handle->Close();
sentData((IntPtr)((void*)overlapped), false);
}
}
finally
{
Monitor::Exit(this->sendSyncRoot);
}
}

Answer 1

For async I/O, completion is notified either by the calling of a completion routine or by the queueing of an IOCP completion message to an IOCP completion queue. In both cases, it should be noted that the OVL struct should have the lifetime of at least the entire async operation, but can be longer if convenient:)
In the case of a completion routine, the unused hEvent parameter in the OVL can be used to transfer a pointer to an 'IOrequest' class instance that contains the data buffer/s, WSABUF array and the OVL struct as members, (and surely a pointer to the socket object for which the I/O has been issued). The OVL pointer is supplied as a parameter to the completion routine and so the hEvent can be retrieved and cast to the class type, so retrieving the complete class instance - OVL, data buffer etc. When the data has been processed, (or immediately in the completion routine the case of WSASend), and this IOrequest is eventually destroyed, (or repooled), the OVL will go with it. This sounds a bit incestuous, but works fine and does not need any nasty macro or other tricks.
A similar approach can be used with full IOCP or, alternatively, the OVL passed as the lpCompletionKey 'spare' parameter.
Oh - and you do care if the operation is completed - you need to at least check for errors.