Simplest Way To Open and Use a Socket in C

Question

I'm just starting out doing some basic network programming with C, and I found all these things about sockets and they all seem very convoluted. Maybe opening sockets with C is just convoluted itself, but I would like to know the simplest and most effective way to open and write data to a socket in the C programming language.

Thanks

Answer 1

Reading and writing from basic sockets is not any harder than reading and writing normal files (just use recv instead of read and send instead if write). Things get a little trickey when you need to open a socket. The reason for that is because there are many different ways to communicate using sockets (TCP, UDP, etc).

Answer 2

You're right, using sockets in C has a difficult syntax. Later languages like Java and Python make it a snap by comparison. The best tutorial I've found for doing socket programming in C is Beej's Guide to Network Programming. I recommend you start at the beginning to get a good overview, but if you just need to get some code working now, you can skip ahead to the section titled Client-Server Background.

Good luck!

Answer 3

You might want to try Tcp4u, it's free any makes socket programming very easy.

http://www.jounin.net/tcp4u.html

Answer 4

You don't mention what platform you are on, but a copy of Unix Network Programming by Stevens would be a good addition to your bookshelf. Most operating systems implement Berkley Sockets using socket, bind, connect, etc.

Answer 5

Unless you write a network daemon, most networking in C can be done at a higher level than using directly the sockets, by using appropriate libraries.

For instance, if you just want to retrieve a file with HTTP, use Neon or libcurl. It will be simpler, it will be at a higher level and you will have gratis SSL, IPv6, etc.

Answer 6

Much good advice here so far. I generally write in C++, but you can find some use in a white paper I wrote "How to Avoid the Top Ten Sockets Programming Errors" - ignore the advice to use the ACE toolkit (since it requires C++) but take note of the socket errors in the paper - they're easy to make and hard to find, especially for a beginner. http://www.riverace.com/sockets10.htm