C++ Boost asio get data size?

Question

At the application level, it is often far more useful to know the number of bytes currently available for reading, rather than the packet size. The amount of data available for reading may be constructed from one or more TCP segments. In the OSI model, a TCP segment (Layer 4: Transport) may be constructed from one or more IP Layer packets (Layer 3: Network), and each packet may be constructed from one or more Ethernet frames (Layer 2: Data Link).

Therefore, I am going to assume the application is interested in knowing how many bytes to read, rather than knowing lower level details, such as the size of a packet. There are a few solutions to this problem:

Query the socket for how much data is available via socket::available(), then allocate the buffer accordingly.
```
std::vector<char> data(socket_.available());
boost::asio::read(socket_, boost::asio::buffer(data));
```
Use a class that Boost.Asio can grow in memory, such as boost::asio::streambuf. Some operations, such as boost::asio::read() accept streambuf objects as their buffer and will allocate memory as is required for the operation. However, a completion condition should be provided; otherwise, the operation will continue until the buffer is full.
```
boost::asio::streambuf data;
boost::asio::read(socket_, data,
                  boost::asio::transfer_at_least(socket_.available()));
```
As Igor R. suggests in the comments, incorporate length as part of the communication protocol. Check the Boost.Asio examples for examples of communication protocols. Focus on the protocol, not necessarily on the Boost.Asio API.
- In a fixed length protocol, a constant byte size is used to indicate message boundaries, such as in the Boost.Asio Porthopper example. As the reader knows the size of the message, the reader can allocate a buffer in advance.
- In a variable length protocol, such as the one used in the Boost.Asio Chat example, a message is often divided into two parts: a header and a body. One approach is to have a a fixed size header that contains various meta-information, such as the length of the body. This allows an application to read a header into a fixed size buffer, extract the body length, allocate a buffer for the body, then read the body.
```
// Read fixed header.
std::vector<char> data(fixed_header_size);
boost::asio::read(socket_, boost::asio::buffer(data));

protocol::header header(data);
network_to_local(header); // Handle endianess.

// Read body.
data.resize(header.body_length());
boost::asio::read(socket_, boost::asio::buffer(data));  

protocol::body body(data);
network_to_local(body); // Handle endianess.
```

On the other hand, if I am mistaken, and you do need the total length of a packet, then one can use the basic_raw_socket. Boost.Asio's ICMP example demonstrates reading IPv4 packets from a socket, and extracting the header's field values.