Socket Programming in C

Loki Astari (C)2016
08 Apr 2016

Building a simple client/server application is the common first internet based applications developers attempt. These applications are built on top of the socket communication library, but socket programming in C++ is not obvious as there are no standard libraries and thus you have to fall back to the C API. The closest "standardish" sort of thing we have is Boost.asio which is at the other end of the spectrum in terms of API and involves a cognitive leap to understand what is happening underneath (or you can just trust the library maintainers). The other alternative is libcurl; the "easy curl" layer is an abstraction of the socket() API, while the "multi curl" layer is an abstraction of the pselect() API that allows multiple sockets to be handled in a single thread.

I am writing a series of articles that start with a basic C++ client/server application and walk through building a C++ communication library. During this processes I will be using examples from codereview.stackexchange.com to illustrate common mistakes and try to show how to write the code correctly (This will also be a learning exercise for me so please let me know if you spot a mistake).

Currently the plan is to write the following articles:

Client/Server C
Client/Server C Read/Write
Client/Server C++ Wrapper
Mult-Threaded Server
Non-Blocking Socket
Co-Routines

Client/Server C++ Basic Version

The minimum example of a working Client/Server application in C++: The full working version is here

C Server

#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>

#define SERVER_BUFFER_SIZE      1024

int main()
{
    int socketId = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);

    struct sockaddr_in serverAddr;
    bzero((char*)&serverAddr, sizeof(serverAddr));
    serverAddr.sin_family       = AF_INET;
    serverAddr.sin_port         = htons(8080);
    serverAddr.sin_addr.s_addr  = INADDR_ANY;
    bind(socketId, (struct sockaddr *) &serverAddr, sizeof(serverAddr));

    listen(socketId, 5);

    int                         finished    = 0;
    while(!finished)
    {
        struct  sockaddr_storage    serverStorage;
        socklen_t                   addr_size   = sizeof serverStorage;
        int newSocket = accept(socketId, (struct sockaddr*)&serverStorage, &addr_size);

        char        buffer[SERVER_BUFFER_SIZE];
        int         get = read(newSocket, buffer, SERVER_BUFFER_SIZE - 1);

        buffer[get] = '\0';
        fprintf(stdout, "%s\n", buffer);

        write(newSocket, "OK", 2);

        fprintf(stdout, "Message Complete\n");

        close(newSocket);
    }
    close(socketId);
}

C Client

#include <arpa/inet.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>

#define CLIENT_BUFFER_SIZE     1024

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    if (argc != 3)
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "Usage: client <host> <Message>\n");
        exit(1);
    }

    int socketId = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);

    struct sockaddr_in serverAddr;
    socklen_t addrSize = sizeof(serverAddr);
    bzero((char*)&serverAddr, sizeof(serverAddr));
    serverAddr.sin_family       = AF_INET;
    serverAddr.sin_port         = htons(8080);
    serverAddr.sin_addr.s_addr  = inet_addr(argv[1]);
    connect(socketId, (struct sockaddr*)&serverAddr, addrSize);

    write(socketId, argv[2], strlen(argv[2]));

    shutdown(socketId, SHUT_WR);

    char    buffer[CLIENT_BUFFER_SIZE];
    size_t  get = read(socketId, buffer, CLIENT_BUFFER_SIZE - 1);

    buffer[get] = '\0';
    fprintf(stdout, "%s %s\n", "Response from server", buffer);

    close(socketId);
}

This version of the Client/Server actually works (a lot of the time) but obviously has a couple of major issues.

Checking Error Codes

If the calls to socket(), bind(), listen() or connect() fail then we have a catastrophic error any further actions will also fail. A few of the error codes generated by these functions can potentially be recovered from but most are programming error or permission failure as a result a human readable message with application termination is an acceptable solution (at this point).

Note: When these functions don't succeed they set the global variable errno which can be translated into a human readable string with strerror(). So the simplest solution is to generate an appropriate error message for the user and terminate the application.

Socket Validation

int socketId = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
if (socketId == -1)
{
    fprintf(stderr, "Failed: socket()\n%s\n", strerror());
    exit(1);
}

Bind Validation

if (bind(socketId, (struct sockaddr *) &serverAddr, sizeof(serverAddr)) == -1)
{
    fprintf(stderr, "Failed: bind()\n%s\n", strerror());
    close(socketId);    // Don't forget to close the socket.
    exit(1);
}

Listen Validation

if (listen(socketId, 5) == -1)
{
    fprintf(stderr, "Failed: connect()\n%s\n", strerror());
    close(socketId);    // Don't forget to close the socket.
    exit(1);
}

Connect Validation

if (connect(socketId, (struct sockaddr*)&serverAddr, addrSize) == -1)
{
    fprintf(stderr, "Failed: connect()\n%s\n", strerror());
    close(socketId);    // Don't forget to close the socket.
    exit(1);
}

Summary

The basic socket programs are relatively trivial. But this version 1 has some obvious flaws the major one being checking error states (which a lot of beginners forget in their first version). The next article will look into some more details about read and write operations on the socket.