Chops Net IP is a C++ library that makes asynchronous networking programming fun. Or at least if not fun, it makes network programming easier and safer, without significantly sacrificing performance. Chops Net IP handles Internet Protocol (IP) communications including TCP, UDP, and UDP multicast. It is written using modern C++ design idioms and a recent (2020) C++ standard.
Chops Net IP is not like any other high-level, general purpose C++ socket library.
Chops Net IP is layered on top of the Asio asynchronous networking library, taking advantage of the portability and functionality that Asio provides. However, it simplifies network programming compared to coding against the Asio API, while providing easy scalability through the asynchronous facilities.
Chops Net IP:
- Asio gotchas
- Simplifies many use cases
- API between TCP and UDP is similar, allowing shared code
- Provides callback points
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The generated Doxygen documentation for chops_net_ip is here.
The stand-alone Asio library is a dependency for Chops Net IP. Specific version (or branch) specs for the Asio dependency is in cmake/download_asio_cpm.cmake.
The shared_buffer library from Connective C++ is a dependency, providing reference counted std::byte buffers.
expected_lite from Martin Moene is a dependency, providing std::expected functionality for C++ 20 code baselines. Chops Net IP uses nonstd::expected in the codebase per Martin's library and will transition to std::expected when C++ 23 becomes the baseline.
chops_net_ip is built under C++ 20, using features such as std::span. In the future concepts / requires will be added.
Continuous integration workflows build and unit test on g++ (through Ubuntu) and MSVC (through Windows). Clang (through macOS) will be supported for continuous integration when C++ 20 thread feature std::stop_source (and related functionality) is fully supported in the GitHub macOS runners. The C++ 20 thread features are only needed for unit testing (through wait_queue). Conditional unit test builds (on macOS) could be implemented, but macOS clang updating to a standard that is now almost six years old is a better solution.
The unit test code uses Catch2. If the CHOPS_NET_IP_BUILD_TESTS flag is provided to Cmake (see commands below) the Cmake configure / generate will download the Catch2 library as appropriate using the CPM.cmake dependency manager. If Catch2 (v3 or greater) is already installed using a different package manager (such as Conan or vcpkg), the CPM_USE_LOCAL_PACKAGES variable can be set which results in find_package being attempted. Note that v3 (or later) of Catch2 is required.
Specific version (or branch) specs for the Catch2 dependency is in the test/CMakeLists.txt file, look for the CPMAddPackage command.
The unit tests use the following libraries from Connective C++:
The example apps do not (currently) have external dependencies other than the required dependencies for chops_net_ip.
To build and run the unit test programs:
First clone the chops-net-ip repository, then create a build directory in parallel to the chops-net-ip directory (this is called "out of source" builds, which is recommended), then cd (change directory) into the build directory. The CMake commands:
cmake -D CHOPS_NET_IP_BUILD_TESTS:BOOL=ON ../chops-net-ip cmake --build . ctest For additional test output, run the unit test individually, for example:
test/net_ip/basic_io_output_test -s The examples can be built by adding -D CHOPS_NET_IP_BUILD_EXAMPLES:BOOL=ON to the CMake configure / generate step.