Daemon passes wait_timeout and gets "MYSQL SERVER HAS GONE AWAY"

[Bryan Seay]

I have a daemon running 24/7 that uses the mysql++ package to connect to my
database.  It works great but after it passes the wait_timeout of the server
it, of course, spits out a "MYSQL SERVER HAS GONE AWAY".

My question is what is the correct way to deal with this?  Is there some
option I am not seeing that will make the daemon reconnect to the db if it
fails?  Or should I put a timer in my code that "pings" the database
occasionally to keep the connection open?

Any ideas are appreciated.

Thanks,
Bryan