How do you change an IP address in C++?

Question

I need to do a number of network-related things in C++ that I would normally do with ifconfig in Linux, but I'd like to do it without parsing the output of a group of system calls. Which C or C++ libraries can I use to tell if a network adapter is up or down, read or change an adapter's IP address and netmask, and change the default DNS gateway?

Answer 1

Basically you need to make a bunch of ioctl calls using a socket handle (SIOCGIFADDR, SIOCADDRT). You can find sample programs that use it in the Linux kernel source under Documentation/networking. Some other links that might be helpful:

• Network Interface operations on AIX
• XBMC's implementation (check out CNetworkInterfaceLinux)

EDIT: Let me also add that if your target is desktop linux, then you can consider using the DBUS API to query network parameters using the NetworkManager.

• http://people.redhat.com/dcbw/NetworkManager/NetworkManager DBUS API.txt (sorry there's some issue inserting links in edits)

Answer 2

You can always look at ifconfig's source code to see how they did it in the first place: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/n/net-tools/net-tools_1.60.orig.tar.gz

Answer 3

The NetworkManager service exposes an API over dbus for querying/manipulating the networking on many distributions these days. This may be too high-level for your purposes (e.g. you require finer control of the network, or dbus/NetworkManager are not available on the system...), but it may provide you with what you need.

Check out the dbus C++ bindings and the NetworkManager API (sorry, I can't find a better formatted version right now, but the information is there).

Answer 4

Check poco libraries