Resources To learn IOCP On Windows

Question

I recently was made aware of this thing called IOCP on windows and i began searching for more information on it but i couldn't find anything up to date (most of the examples were on codeproject almost 5 years old) and not too many guides or tutorials. Can anyone recommend any up to date resources about it in the form of online tutorials or example projects (that you wrote and can share or other open source projects) or even a book about it because if it's as good as it sounds i plan to use it extensively so i will invest in it.

Thank You.

Answer 1

If you're looking at IOCP from a Network programming point of view then you probably also want to add Network Programming for Microsoft Windows to your list of resources.

There were lots of basic IOCP tutorials on CodeProject back in 2002 when I wrote my articles on IOCP there, so I took a slightly different approach and wrote some code that was, hopefully, reusable as a simple networking framework. This has since grown into a product that I sell. The latest version of the code that's associated with the original CodeProject articles can be found here: http://www.serverframework.com/products---the-free-framework.html I've changed it considerably over the years but the original code still works fine and provides good scalability and is, perhaps, useful as a working example to learn from.

Answer 2

IOCP is a feature that has been in Windows since the dark ages and has changed little in years since. As such, any samples etc. from 5+ years ago should still work pretty well today.

MSDN has some documentation on IOCP: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365198%28v=VS.85%29.aspx

Mark Russinovich also wrote up a great intro into IOCP: http://sysinternals.d4rk4.ru/Information/IoCompletionPorts.html

Mark also wrote a more thorough description of Windows' IO infrastructure in "Windows Internals" which is essential reading.

I also strongly recommend Jeffery Richter's "Windows via C/C++" which is also essential reading for anyone embarking on lower-level Windows programming.

HTH.