Hello. I'm learning Boost::asio and all that async stuff. How can I asynchronously read to variable user_ of type std::string? Boost::asio::buffer(user_) works only with async_write(), but not with async_read(). It works with vector, so what is the reason for it not to work with string? Is there another way to do that besides declaring char user_[max_len] and using Boost::asio::buffer(user_, max_len)?

Also, what's the point of inheriting from boost::enable_shared_from_this<Connection> and using shared_from_this() instead of this in async_read() and async_write()? I've seen that a lot in the examples.

Here is a part of my code:

class Connection
{
    public:

        Connection(tcp::acceptor &acceptor) :
            acceptor_(acceptor), 
            socket_(acceptor.get_io_service(), tcp::v4())
        { }

        void start()
        {
            acceptor_.get_io_service().post(
                boost::bind(&Connection::start_accept, this));
        }

    private:

        void start_accept()
        {
            acceptor_.async_accept(socket_, 
                boost::bind(&Connection::handle_accept, this, 
                placeholders::error));
        }

        void handle_accept(const boost::system::error_code& err)
        {
            if (err)
            {
                disconnect();
            }
            else
            {
                async_read(socket_, boost::asio::buffer(user_),
                    boost::bind(&Connection::handle_user_read, this,
                    placeholders::error, placeholders::bytes_transferred));
            }
        }

        void handle_user_read(const boost::system::error_code& err,
            std::size_t bytes_transferred)
        {
            if ( err or (bytes_transferred != sizeof(user_)) )
            {
                disconnect();
            }
            else
            {
                ...
            }
        }

        ...

        void disconnect()
        {
            socket_.shutdown(tcp::socket::shutdown_both);
            socket_.close();
            socket_.open(tcp::v4());
            start_accept();
        }

        tcp::acceptor &acceptor_;
        tcp::socket socket_;
        std::string user_;
        std::string pass_;
        ...
};