Please Help to make asynchronous socket server and client working ( written in C)

Question

Hi,

Could some please help me with these codes? I am trying to make client and server to communicate asynchronously. I mean both client and server don't wait for each other (e.g. when a server or client reads from recvfrom() and data are not present, it takes the last received one (what I named is backup). Here are the codes:

client

    ...

    /* Create a datagram/UDP socket */
    if ((sock = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, IPPROTO_UDP)) < 0)
        DieWithError("socket() failed");

    /* Construct the server address structure */
    memset(&echoServAddr, 0, sizeof(echoServAddr));    /* Zero out structure */
    echoServAddr.sin_family = AF_INET;                 /* Internet addr family */
    echoServAddr.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr(servIP);  /* Server IP address */
    echoServAddr.sin_port   = htons(echoServPort);     /* Server port */

    /* Set signal handler for SIGIO */
    handler.sa_handler = SIGIOHandler;
    /* Create mask that mask all signals */
    if (sigfillset(&handler.sa_mask) < 0) 
        DieWithError("sigfillset() failed");
    /* No flags */
    handler.sa_flags = 0;

    if (sigaction(SIGIO, &handler, 0) < 0)
        DieWithError("sigaction() failed for SIGIO");

    /* We must own the socket to receive the SIGIO message */
    if (fcntl(sock, F_SETOWN, getpid()) < 0)
        DieWithError("Unable to set process owner to us");

    /* Arrange for nonblocking I/O and SIGIO delivery */
    if (fcntl(sock, F_SETFL, O_NONBLOCK | FASYNC) < 0)
        DieWithError("Unable to put server sock into non-blocking");
...

server ...

    /* Create socket for sending/receiving datagrams */
    if ((sock = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, IPPROTO_UDP)) < 0)
        DieWithError("socket() failed");

    /* Set up the server address structure */
    memset(&echoServAddr, 0, sizeof(echoServAddr));   /* Zero out structure */
    echoServAddr.sin_family = AF_INET;                /* Internet family */
    echoServAddr.sin_addr.s_addr = htonl(INADDR_ANY); /* Any incoming interf*/
    echoServAddr.sin_port = htons(echoServPort);      /* Port */

    /* Bind to the local address */
    if (bind(sock, (struct sockaddr *) &echoServAddr, sizeof(echoServAddr)) < 0)
        DieWithError("bind() failed");

    /* Set signal handler for SIGIO */
    handler.sa_handler = SIGIOHandler;
    /* Create mask that mask all signals */
    if (sigfillset(&handler.sa_mask) < 0) 
        DieWithError("sigfillset() failed");
    /* No flags */
    handler.sa_flags = 0;

    if (sigaction(SIGIO, &handler, 0) < 0)
        DieWithError("sigaction() failed for SIGIO");

    if (fcntl(sock, F_SETOWN, getpid()) < 0)
        DieWithError("Unable to set process owner to us");

    /* Arrange for nonblocking I/O and SIGIO delivery */
    if (fcntl(sock, F_SETFL, O_NONBLOCK | FASYNC) < 0)
        DieWithError("Unable to put client sock into non-blocking");
 ...

The codes are compiled and linked with any problem but they don't exchange data to each other , why? ... is there a problem somewhere?

Thanks for your replies,

PS: the codes are now removed ...

Answer 1

Check your port, I think they maxed out...should be 65535 which is the maximum for a port number (16 bits)!

Give it a smaller number and you should be ok!

Edit: The maximum number of ports used is 65536, which is a maximum 16 bits as it is a short int. If you go over the maximum, it will fail. Give both client and server a arbitary port number that is greater than 1024 and less than 65536.

Have a look at the Beej's Guide to socket programming...

Hope this helps, Best regards, Tom.

Answer 2

During your recv you can use MSG_PEEK | MSG_DONTWAIT as options to recv which will allow you to just check if there is any data that needs to be read.