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"This should work with standalone-Asio!"
Beast uses more than Boost.Asio, it depends on various other parts of Boost. The standalone Asio is currently farther ahead than the Boost version. Keeping Beast maintained against both versions of Asio is beyond the resources of the author at the present time. Compatibility with non-Boost libraries should not be an acceptance criteria. Beast is currently designed to be a part of Boost: nothing more, nothing less. Looking at the bigger picture, it is the author's goal to propose this library for standardization. A logical track for achieving this is as follows:

[ordered_list [ Boost library acceptance. ][ Port to the Boost.Asio version of Networking-TS (This has to wait until Boost's version of Asio is updated). ][ Wait for Networking-TS to become an official part of C++. ][ Port to the standard library versions of networking (gcc, clang, msvc). ][ Develop proposed language (This can happen concurrently with steps 3 and 4) ]]
"You need benchmarks!"
The energy invested in Beast went into the design of the interfaces, not performance. That said, the most sensitive parts of Beast have been optimized or designed with optimization in mind. The slow parts of WebSocket processing have been optimized, and the HTTP parser design is lifted from another extremely popular project which has performance as a design goal (see [@https://github.com/h2o/picohttpparser]).

From: [@http://www.boost.org/development/requirements.html]

"Aim first for clarity and correctness; optimization should be only a secondary concern in most Boost libraries."

As the library matures it will undergo optimization passes; benchmarks will logically accompany this process. There is a small benchmarking program included in the tests which compares the performance of Beast's parser to the NodeJS reference parser, as well as some benchmarks which compare the performance of various Beast dynamic buffer implementations against Asio's.
"Beast is a terrible name!"
The name "Boost.Http" or "Boost.WebSocket" would mislead users into believing they could perform an HTTP request on a URL or put up a WebSocket client or server in a couple of lines of code. Where would the core utilities go? Very likely it would step on the owner of Boost.Asio's toes to put things in the boost/asio directory; at the very least, it would create unrequested, additional work for the foreign repository.

"Beast" is sufficiently vague as to not suggest any particular functionality, while acting as a memorable umbrella term for a family of low level containers and algorithms. People in the know or with a need for low-level network protocol operations will have no trouble finding it, and the chances of luring a novice into a bad experience are greatly reduced. There is precedent for proper names: "Hana", "Fusion", "Phoenix", and "Spirit" come to mind. Is "Beast" really any worse than say, "mp11" for example? Beast also already has a growing body of users and attention from the open source community, the name Beast comes up in reddit posts and StackOverflow as the answer to questions about which HTTP or WebSocket library to use.
"Some more advanced examples, e.g. including TLS with client/server certificates would help."
The server-framework example demonstrates how to implement a server that supports TLS using certificates. There are also websocket and HTTP client examples which use TLS. Furthermore, management of certificates is beyond the scope of the public interfaces of the library. Asio already provides documentation, interfaces, and examples for performing these tasks - Beast does not intend to reinvent them or to redundantly provide this information.
"A built-in HTTP router?"
We presume this means a facility to match expressions against the URI in HTTP requests, and dispatch them to calling code. The authors feel that this is a responsibility of higher level code. Beast does not try to offer a web server. That said, the server-framework example has a concept of request routing called a Service. Two services are provided, one for serving files and the other for handling WebSocket upgrade requests.
"HTTP Cookies? Forms/File Uploads?"
Cookies, or managing these types of HTTP headers in general, is the responsibility of higher levels. Beast just tries to get complete messages to and from the calling code. It deals in the HTTP headers just enough to process the message body and leaves the rest to callers. However, for forms and file uploads the symmetric interface of the message class allows HTTP requests to include arbitrary body types including those needed to upload a file or fill out a form.
"...supporting TLS (is this a feature? If not this would be a show-stopper), etc."
Beast works with the Stream concept, so it automatically works with the `boost::asio::ssl::stream` that you have already set up through Asio.
"There should also be more examples of how to integrate the http service with getting files from the file system, generating responses CGI-style"
The design goal for the library is to not try to invent a web server. We feel that there is a strong need for a basic implementation that models the HTTP message and provides functions to send and receive them over Asio. Such an implementation should serve as a building block upon which higher abstractions such as the aforementioned HTTP service or cgi-gateway can be built.

There are several HTTP servers in the example directory which deliver files, as well as some tested and compiled code snippets which can be used as a starting point for interfacing with other processes.
"You should send a 100-continue to ask for the rest of the body if required."
Deciding on whether to send the "Expect: 100-continue" header or how to handle it on the server side is the caller's responsibility; Beast provides the functionality to send or inspect the header before sending or reading the body.
"I would also like to see instances of this library being used in production. That would give some evidence that the design works in practice."
Beast has already been on public servers receiving traffic and handling hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of financial transactions daily. The servers run [*rippled], open source software ([@https://github.com/ripple/rippled repository]) implementing the [@https://ripple.com/files/ripple_consensus_whitepaper.pdf [*Ripple Consensus Protocol]], technology provided by [@http://ripple.com Ripple].

Furthermore, the repository has grown significantly in popularity in 2017. There are many users, and some of them participate directly in the repository by reporting issues, performing testing, and in some cases submitting pull requests with code contributions.
What about WebSocket message compression?
Beast WebSocket supports the permessage-deflate extension described in [@https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-hybi-permessage-compression-00 draft-ietf-hybi-permessage-compression-00]. The library comes with a header-only, C++11 port of ZLib's "deflate" codec used in the implementation of the permessage-deflate extension.
Where is the WebSocket TLS/SSL interface?
The `websocket::stream` wraps the socket or stream that you provide (for example, a `boost::asio::ip::tcp::socket` or a `boost::asio::ssl::stream`). You establish your TLS connection using the interface on `ssl::stream` like shown in all of the Asio examples, then construct your `websocket::stream` around it.

The WebSocket implementation [*does] provide support for shutting down the TLS connection through the use of the ADL compile-time virtual functions [link beast.ref.boost__beast__websocket__teardown `teardown`] and [link beast.ref.boost__beast__websocket__async_teardown `async_teardown`]. These will properly close the connection as per rfc6455 and overloads are available for TLS streams. Callers may provide their own overloads of these functions for user-defined next layer types.
Windows and OpenSSL: How do I install and build with OpenSSL on Microsoft Windows?
An easy method is to use command-line package installers chocolatey or scoop. Examples: "choco install -y openssl --x86 --version 1.1.1.700" or "scoop install openssl@1.1.1g -a 32bit -g"

If you've installed OpenSSL to a directory with spaces in the name, it's often preferable to create a symbolic link so that you may use a simpler path, such as:

mklink /D "OpenSSL" "Program Files (x86)\\OpenSSL-Win32"

Set the environment variable OPENSSL_ROOT to the location of the new install:

set OPENSSL_ROOT=C:/OpenSSL

Then, proceed to build. Refer to beast/.dockers/windows-vs-32/Dockerfile for an example of building the test cases with OpenSSL.
English Actions
"This should work with standalone-Asio!"
Beast uses more than Boost.Asio, it depends on various other parts of Boost. The standalone Asio is currently farther ahead than the Boost version. Keeping Beast maintained against both versions of Asio is beyond the resources of the author at the present time. Compatibility with non-Boost libraries should not be an acceptance criteria. Beast is currently designed to be a part of Boost: nothing more, nothing less. Looking at the bigger picture, it is the author's goal to propose this library for standardization. A logical track for achieving this is as follows:

[ordered_list [ Boost library acceptance. ][ Port to the Boost.Asio version of Networking-TS (This has to wait until Boost's version of Asio is updated). ][ Wait for Networking-TS to become an official part of C++. ][ Port to the standard library versions of networking (gcc, clang, msvc). ][ Develop proposed language (This can happen concurrently with steps 3 and 4) ]]
"You need benchmarks!"
The energy invested in Beast went into the design of the interfaces, not performance. That said, the most sensitive parts of Beast have been optimized or designed with optimization in mind. The slow parts of WebSocket processing have been optimized, and the HTTP parser design is lifted from another extremely popular project which has performance as a design goal (see [@https://github.com/h2o/picohttpparser]).

From: [@http://www.boost.org/development/requirements.html]

"Aim first for clarity and correctness; optimization should be only a secondary concern in most Boost libraries."

As the library matures it will undergo optimization passes; benchmarks will logically accompany this process. There is a small benchmarking program included in the tests which compares the performance of Beast's parser to the NodeJS reference parser, as well as some benchmarks which compare the performance of various Beast dynamic buffer implementations against Asio's.
"Beast is a terrible name!"
The name "Boost.Http" or "Boost.WebSocket" would mislead users into believing they could perform an HTTP request on a URL or put up a WebSocket client or server in a couple of lines of code. Where would the core utilities go? Very likely it would step on the owner of Boost.Asio's toes to put things in the boost/asio directory; at the very least, it would create unrequested, additional work for the foreign repository.

"Beast" is sufficiently vague as to not suggest any particular functionality, while acting as a memorable umbrella term for a family of low level containers and algorithms. People in the know or with a need for low-level network protocol operations will have no trouble finding it, and the chances of luring a novice into a bad experience are greatly reduced. There is precedent for proper names: "Hana", "Fusion", "Phoenix", and "Spirit" come to mind. Is "Beast" really any worse than say, "mp11" for example? Beast also already has a growing body of users and attention from the open source community, the name Beast comes up in reddit posts and StackOverflow as the answer to questions about which HTTP or WebSocket library to use.
"Some more advanced examples, e.g. including TLS with client/server certificates would help."
The server-framework example demonstrates how to implement a server that supports TLS using certificates. There are also websocket and HTTP client examples which use TLS. Furthermore, management of certificates is beyond the scope of the public interfaces of the library. Asio already provides documentation, interfaces, and examples for performing these tasks - Beast does not intend to reinvent them or to redundantly provide this information.
"A built-in HTTP router?"
We presume this means a facility to match expressions against the URI in HTTP requests, and dispatch them to calling code. The authors feel that this is a responsibility of higher level code. Beast does not try to offer a web server. That said, the server-framework example has a concept of request routing called a Service. Two services are provided, one for serving files and the other for handling WebSocket upgrade requests.
"HTTP Cookies? Forms/File Uploads?"
Cookies, or managing these types of HTTP headers in general, is the responsibility of higher levels. Beast just tries to get complete messages to and from the calling code. It deals in the HTTP headers just enough to process the message body and leaves the rest to callers. However, for forms and file uploads the symmetric interface of the message class allows HTTP requests to include arbitrary body types including those needed to upload a file or fill out a form.
"...supporting TLS (is this a feature? If not this would be a show-stopper), etc."
Beast works with the Stream concept, so it automatically works with the `boost::asio::ssl::stream` that you have already set up through Asio.
"There should also be more examples of how to integrate the http service with getting files from the file system, generating responses CGI-style"
The design goal for the library is to not try to invent a web server. We feel that there is a strong need for a basic implementation that models the HTTP message and provides functions to send and receive them over Asio. Such an implementation should serve as a building block upon which higher abstractions such as the aforementioned HTTP service or cgi-gateway can be built.

There are several HTTP servers in the example directory which deliver files, as well as some tested and compiled code snippets which can be used as a starting point for interfacing with other processes.
"You should send a 100-continue to ask for the rest of the body if required."
Deciding on whether to send the "Expect: 100-continue" header or how to handle it on the server side is the caller's responsibility; Beast provides the functionality to send or inspect the header before sending or reading the body.
"I would also like to see instances of this library being used in production. That would give some evidence that the design works in practice."
Beast has already been on public servers receiving traffic and handling hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of financial transactions daily. The servers run [*rippled], open source software ([@https://github.com/ripple/rippled repository]) implementing the [@https://ripple.com/files/ripple_consensus_whitepaper.pdf [*Ripple Consensus Protocol]], technology provided by [@http://ripple.com Ripple].

Furthermore, the repository has grown significantly in popularity in 2017. There are many users, and some of them participate directly in the repository by reporting issues, performing testing, and in some cases submitting pull requests with code contributions.
What about WebSocket message compression?
Beast WebSocket supports the permessage-deflate extension described in [@https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-hybi-permessage-compression-00 draft-ietf-hybi-permessage-compression-00]. The library comes with a header-only, C++11 port of ZLib's "deflate" codec used in the implementation of the permessage-deflate extension.
Where is the WebSocket TLS/SSL interface?
The `websocket::stream` wraps the socket or stream that you provide (for example, a `boost::asio::ip::tcp::socket` or a `boost::asio::ssl::stream`). You establish your TLS connection using the interface on `ssl::stream` like shown in all of the Asio examples, then construct your `websocket::stream` around it.

The WebSocket implementation [*does] provide support for shutting down the TLS connection through the use of the ADL compile-time virtual functions [link beast.ref.boost__beast__websocket__teardown `teardown`] and [link beast.ref.boost__beast__websocket__async_teardown `async_teardown`]. These will properly close the connection as per rfc6455 and overloads are available for TLS streams. Callers may provide their own overloads of these functions for user-defined next layer types.
Windows and OpenSSL: How do I install and build with OpenSSL on Microsoft Windows?
An easy method is to use command-line package installers chocolatey or scoop. Examples: "choco install -y openssl --x86 --version 1.1.1.700" or "scoop install openssl@1.1.1g -a 32bit -g"

If you've installed OpenSSL to a directory with spaces in the name, it's often preferable to create a symbolic link so that you may use a simpler path, such as:

mklink /D "OpenSSL" "Program Files (x86)\\OpenSSL-Win32"

Set the environment variable OPENSSL_ROOT to the location of the new install:

set OPENSSL_ROOT=C:/OpenSSL

Then, proceed to build. Refer to beast/.dockers/windows-vs-32/Dockerfile for an example of building the test cases with OpenSSL.

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The design goal for the library is to not try to invent a web server. We feel that there is a strong need for a basic implementation that models the HTTP message and provides functions to send and receive them over Asio. Such an implementation should serve as a building block upon which higher abstractions such as the aforementioned HTTP service or cgi-gateway can be built.

There are several HTTP servers in the example directory which deliver files, as well as some tested and compiled code snippets which can be used as a starting point for interfacing with other processes.
The design goal for the library is to not try to invent a web server. We feel that there is a strong need for a basic implementation that models the HTTP message and provides functions to send and receive them over Asio. Such an implementation should serve as a building block upon which higher abstractions such as the aforementioned HTTP service or cgi-gateway can be built.

There are several HTTP servers in the example directory which deliver files, as well as some tested and compiled code snippets which can be used as a starting point for interfacing with other processes.
06/05/2026
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String information

Component
Boost Beast Translation (zh_Hans)/Doc / Qbk / 08 Design / 4 Faq (qbk)
Source string description
type: variablelist cell
Flags
read-only
Unit identifier
56610
Source string location
string ID 16
String age
06/05/2026
Last updated
06/05/2026
Source string age
06/05/2026
Translation file QuickBook file
doc/qbk/08_design/4_faq.qbk, string 24