Sending TCP data without recieving (boost asio) - tcp

Question

I'm working my way through boost's asio tutorial. I'm looking into their chat example. More specifically, I'm trying to split their chat client from a sender+receiver, to just a sender and just a receiver, but I'm seeing some behaviour that I can't explain.
The setup consists of:
boost::asio::io_service io_service;
tcp::resolver::iterator endpoint = resolver.resolve(...);
boost::thread t(boost::bind(&boost::asio::io_service::run, &io_service));
boost::asio::async_connect(socket, endpoint, bind(handle_connect, ... ));
The sending portion effectively conisists of:
while (std::cin.getline(str))
io_service.post( do_write, str );
and
void do_write (string str)
{
boost::asio::async_write(socket, str, bind( handle_write, ... ));
}
The receive section consists of
void handle_connect(...)
{
boost::asio::async_read(socket, read_msg_, bind(handle_read, ...));
}
void handle_read(...)
{
std::cout << read_msg_;
boost::asio::async_read(socket, read_msg_, bind(handle_read, ...));
}
If I comment out the content of handle_connect to isolate the send portion, my other client (compiled using the original code) does not receive anything. If I revert, then comment out the content of handle_read, my other client only receives the first message.
Why is it necessary to call async_read() in order to be able to post() an async_write()?
The full unmodified code is linked above.

Answer 1

The problem here is that, your io_service is running out of work and stops processing requests even before you start sending your chat messages.
If you comment out the body of handle_connect, then the only work it had to do was to dispatch the handle_connect handler and then execute it once the connection was done.
std::size_t scheduler::run(asio::error_code& ec)
{
.....
mutex::scoped_lock lock(mutex_);
std::size_t n = 0;
for (; do_run_one(lock, this_thread, ec); lock.lock())
if (n != (std::numeric_limits<std::size_t>::max)())
++n;
return n;
}
So, you have to provide it with something in it's operation queue. This was done with handle_read_header handler in the original code as this handler would always be in the need of servicing till the client gets something from the server.
You can do what you want to do by providing work to the io_service.
asio::io_context io_context;
asio::io_context::work wrk(io_context); // make `run` run forever
tcp::resolver resolver(io_context);
tcp::resolver::results_type endpoints = resolver.resolve(argv[1], argv[2]);
chat_client c(io_context, endpoints);
asio::thread t(boost::bind(&asio::io_context::run, &io_context));