How-To Guides

This library has two purposes: to provide some cross-platform abstractions, and to provide often used utility functionality for other interpeer projects.

For this reason, it seems prudent to cut to the chase, and provide guides for how to accomplish certain tasks with this library. These are sorted by related concerns, which are also reflected in the include directories and namespaces of the library.

Support with C++ Types

How-To make C++ types comparable: Making complex C++ types comparable, e.g. for use in sorted containers such as std::map.
How-To make C++ types hashable: Create hashes from C++ types, and make them usable in e.g. unsorted containers such as std::unordered_map.

Special C++ Types

How-To work with binary data: Using bytes – and avoiding both char * and void * in the process.
How-To use variable sized integers: Use a special integer type to signal that you might want to serialize it in variable length encoding.
How-To use extended type traits: Using extended type traits.

Serialization

How-To (de-)serialize integers: Serialize and deserialize integer types.
How-To (de-)serialize integers in variable length: Variable sized integer serialization and deserialization.

Filesystem Utilities

How-To convert filesystem paths between WIN32 and POSIX: Convert between POSIX-style and WIN32-style paths.
How-To generate temporary file names: Generate names for temporary files in appropriate scratch directories.

Socket and Network Utilities

How-To use socket addresses in a portable way: Use different types of socket address and interface with system APIs for this.
How-To parse CIDR addresses into socket_address: Create socket addresses from CIDR-style strings.
How-To determine a socket address scope: Work with network masks and similar scope issues.
How-To create a network: Create a network, and determine some special addresses in it.
How-To manage a network: Manage address assignments in a network.
How-To work with URLs: Parse and manipulate Uniform Resource Locators (URLs).
How-To parse IP headers: Parse addresses from IPv4 and IPv6 packet headers.

String Utilities

How-To work with UTF8 encoding: Convert to- and from UTF-8 strings on Windows.
How-To perform common string manipulations: Perform some common string manipulations, such as upper- and lowercasing strings, finding parts, or splitting them.
How-To work with URL encoding: Use URL encoding for strings.
How-To work with hex encoding: Hex encode or decode strings, and also use hex dumps for debugging.

System Utiliities

How-To deal with system errors: Deal with system error codes in a platform independent way.
How-To write cross-platform plugins: Write memory in a platform independent way.
How-To deal with process identifiers: Access process IDs in a platform independent way.
sys-plugin: Write cross-platform plugins.

Concurrency

How-To use tasklets: Using tasklets to simplify thread management.
How-To share data with a concurrent queue: Using a concurrent queue for sharing data between threads.
How-To dispatch commands to threads (CQRS): Dispatch commands to worker threads and fetch results.
How-To use lock policies: Use lock policies to write code that may use locks, but can also be used lock free.

Miscellaneous

How-To use CRC32 checksums: Calculate and verify CRC32 checksums.
How-To create random numbers: Generate random bits in a cryptographically unsafe way.
How-To create exponential backoff timeouts: Generate exponential backoff series for timeouts.
How-To create log output: Use logging at various log levels in your code and choose your preferred logging backend.