Whats the deal with boost.asio and file i/o?

Question

I've noticed that boost.asio has a lot of examples involving sockets, serial ports, and all sorts of non-file examples. Google hasn't really turned up a lot for me that mentions if asio is a good or valid approach for doing asynchronous file i/o.

I've got gobs of data i'd like to write to disk asynchronously. This can be done with native overlapped io in Windows (my platform), but I'd prefer to have a platform independent solution.

I'm curious if

1. boost.asio has any kind of file support
2. boost.asio file support is mature enough for everyday file i/o
3. Will file support ever be added? Whats the outlook for this?

Answer 1

Starting with (I think) Boost 1.36 (which contains Asio 1.2.0) you can use [boost::asio::]windows::stream_handle or windows::random_access_handle to wrap a HANDLE and perform asynchronous read and write methods on it that use the OVERLAPPED structure internally.

Answer 2

boost::asio::windows::random_access_handle is the easiest way to do this, if you need something advanced, for example asynchronous LockFileEx or something else, you might extend asio, add your own asynchronous events. example