Dmitry’s January Update In January 2021 I started working on improving Boost.JSON for The C++ Alliance. The time during this first month was mostly spent on getting familiar with the project, particularly with its list of issues on GitHub. It turns out, half of the open issues are related to documentation. For example, the section about conversions might need a rewrite, and related entries in the reference need to provide more information. There should be more examples for parsing customiza...

A year in the C++ Alliance January marks one year since I joined the C++ Alliance and started maintaining the Boost.Beast library. It’s a pleasure to work with interesting and fun people who are passionate about writing C++, and in particular good C++. During the past year I have spent some time attending ISO WG21 meetings online as an alternate representative of the C++ Alliance. Prior to joining the organisation, during my life as a developer I always felt that the standards committee...

Overview A message currently appears (mid-January 2021) at the top of the travis-ci.org website. “Please be aware travis-ci.org will be shutting down in several weeks, with all accounts migrating to travis-ci.com. Please stay tuned here for more information.” The transition has not been a smooth one, with long, disruptive delays occurring on existing builds, and lack of clear communication from the company. Many were unaware of the impending change. Some informative posts about the topic a...

Reusable HTTP(S) Connections Something I am often asked by users of Boost Beast is how to code a client which effectively re-uses a pool of HTTP connections, in the same way a web browser does. The premise is straightforward - if our client is going to be making multiple calls to a web server (or several of them) then it makes sense that once a connection has been used for one request, it is returned to a connection pool so that a subsequent request can make use of it. It also makes sens...

A Coroutine Websocket Using Boost Beast This month I thought I would present a little idea that I had a few months ago. Boost.Beast is a very comprehensive and competent websocket implementation, but it is not what you might call “straightforward” to use unless you are already wise in the ways of Asio. Beast’s documentation and design makes no apology for this. There is a disclaimer in the documentation: To use Beast effectively, a prior understanding of Networking is required. This ...