Using SSL sockets and non-SSL sockets simultaneously in Boost.Asio?

Question

I\'m in the process of converting a library to Boost.Asio (which has worked very well so far), but I\'ve hit something of a stumbling block with regards to a design decision

Answer 1

There's a couple of ways you can do this. In the past, I've done something like

if ( sslEnabled )
    boost::asio::async_write( secureSocket_ );
} else {
    boost::asio::async_write( secureSocket_.lowest_layer() );
}

Which can get messy pretty quickly with a lot of if/else statements. You could also create an abstract class (pseudo code - oversimplified)

class Socket
{
    public:
       virtual void connect( ... );
       virtual void accept( ... );
       virtual void async_write( ... );
       virtual void async_read( ... );
    private:
        boost::asio::ip::tcp::socket socket_;
};

Then create a derived class SecureSocket to operate on a secureSocket_ instead of socket_. I don't think it would be duplicating a lot of code, and it's probably cleaner than if/else whenever you need to async_read or async_write.