Sending Protobuf Messages with boost::asio

Question

I'm trying to hack a client together in C++ using Google's Protocol Buffers and boost::asio.

My problem is that I don't know how I can feed the protobuf message to asio. What I have is this:

// set up *sock - works
PlayerInfo info;
info.set_name(name);
// other stuff

Now I know that the following is wrong, but I'll post it anyways:

size_t request_length = info.ByteSize();
boost::asio::write(*sock, boost::asio::buffer(info, request_length));

I got as far as that I know that I have to pack my message differently into the buffer - but how?

Generally speaking, I'm having a hard time figuring out how boost::asio works. There are some tutorials, but they normally just cover sending standard data formats such as ints, which works out-of-the-box. I figured that my problem is serialization, but on the other hand I learned that protobuf should do this for me... and now I'm confused ;)

Thanks for your help!

--> Daniel Gehriger provided the solution, thanks a lot!

Answer 1

I don't know much about Google's Protocol buffer, but try the following:

PlayerInfo info;
info.set_name(name);
// ...

boost::asio::streambuf b;
std::ostream os(&b);
info.SerializeToOstream(&os);

boost::asio::write(*sock, b);