This document describes Winsock programming considerations, architecture, and

capabilities available to Winsock developers. It is Windows implementation of Sockets.

What is a socket?
A socket is very much like a telephone - it's the endpoint of a two-way communications channel.
By connecting two sockets together you can pass data between processes, even processes
running on different computers, just as you can talk over the telephone once you've made a
phone call connecting your telephone with someone else's.

A server is a program which waits for incoming connections and presumably

provides some service to other programs. In contrast a client is a program which
connects to a server, usually to ask it to do something. It is important to remember
that it is not the computer that distinguishes what's a client or a server, but the way
that the program uses the socket.

Before you begin

At the start of every program that uses sockets you must call the WinSock function
WSAStartup():
#include <windows.h>
#include <winsock.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#pragma comment(lib, "ws2_32.lib")
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
WSADATA WSAData;
WSAStartup(0x202, &WSAData);
return 0;
}

If the initialization function (or most of the other WinSock functions) fails you can get additional
error information by calling WSAGetLastError(), which returns an error code indicating the
cause of the failure.

Similarly you must call the WSACleanup() function before your program exits to properly shut
down the library. In Win32 applications this good form although not strictly necessary; it is
critical in Win16 or Win32s applications.

Address resolution
every socket has a unique address made up of a couple of different parts:

The first part is the IP address, a four-digit number usually written as four decimal numbers
separated by periods (e.g. 192.9.200.10), which specifies which computer you want to talk to.
Every computer on the Internet has at least one IP address.
The second is the port number, allowing more than one conversation to take place
per computer - much like extension numbers in an office. An application may either
pick a port number to use (some are, of course, reserved) or request a random port
when assigning an address to a socket.

How to listen for socket connections

First, you must create a socket - which is much like getting a telephone line installed
from the phone company. The socket() function is used to do this.

After creating a socket, we must give the socket an address to listen to .The bind()
function is used to do this (it binds a socket to an address, hence the name). An
internet socket address is specified using the sockaddr_in structure, which contains
fields that specify the address family, address, and port number for a socket. A
pointer to this structure is passed to functions like bind() which need an address.
Because sockets are intended to support more than one address family it's
necessary to cast the sockaddr_in pointer to a sockaddr structure pointer to avoid
compiler warnings.

If you are busy handling a connection, the connection request will wait until you can
deal with it. The listen() function is used to set the maximum number of requests
(up to a maximum of five, usually) that will be queued before requests start being
denied.

socket(), gethostname(), gethostbyname(), bind(), and listen() functions to

establish a socket which can accept incoming connections.

After you create a socket to get calls, you must wait for calls to that socket. The
accept() function is used to do this. Calling accept() is analogous to picking up the
telephone if it's ringing. Accept() returns a new socket which is connected to the
caller.

A program which listens for incoming socket connections usually calls accept() in a
loop and handles each incoming connection.

How to call a socket:

After creating a socket to make the call with, and giving it an address, you use the
connect() function to try to connect to a listening socket.

creates the socket, sets it up, and calls a particular port number on a particular
computer, returning a connected socket through which data can flow.

How to talk between sockets:]

Now that you have a connection between sockets you want to send data between them. The
send() and recv() functions are used to do this.

Unlike when you're reading and writing a file, the network can only send or receive a limited
amount of data at a time. As a result you can ask for many characters but you'll often get back
fewer than you asked for. One way to handle this is to loop until you have received the number of
characters that you want. A simple function to read a given number of characters into a buffer is:
int read_data(SOCKET s, /* connected socket */
char *buf, /* pointer to the buffer */
int n /* number of characters (bytes) we want */
)
{ int bcount; /* counts bytes read */
int br; /* bytes read this pass */

bcount = 0;
br = 0;
while (bcount < n) { /* loop until full buffer */
if ((br = recv(s, buf, n - bcount)) > 0) {
bcount += br; /* increment byte counter */
buf += br; /* move buffer ptr for next read */
}
else if (br < 0) /* signal an error to the caller */
return -1;
}
return bcount;
}

What to do when you're done with a socket:

you must close a connection between sockets. The closesocket() function is used
to close each end of a socket connection. If one end of a socket is closed and you
try to send() to the other end, send() will return an error. A recv() which is waiting
when the other end of a socket connection is closed will return zero bytes.

the establish() function.

#include

/* code to establish a socket

*/
SOCKET establish(unsigned short portnum)
{ char myname[256];
SOCKET s;
struct sockaddr_in sa;
struct hostent *hp;

memset(&sa, 0, sizeof(struct sockaddr_in)); /* clear our address */

gethostname(myname, sizeof(myname)); /* who are we? */
hp = gethostbyname(myname); /* get our address info */
if (hp == NULL) /* we don't exist !? */
return(INVALID_SOCKET);
sa.sin_family = hp->h_addrtype; /* this is our host address */
 sa.sin_port = htons(portnum); /* this is our port number */
s = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0); /* create the socket */
if (s == INVALID_SOCKET)
return INVALID_SOCKET;

/* bind the socket to the internet address */

if (bind(s, (struct sockaddr *)&sa, sizeof(struct sockaddr_in)) ==
SOCKET_ERROR) {
closesocket(s);
return(INVALID_SOCKET);
}
listen(s, 3); /* max # of queued connects */
return(s);}

Figure 2, a skeleton server.

#include

#define PORTNUM 50000 /* random port number, we need something */

void do_something(SOCKET);

main()
{ SOCKET s;

if ((s = establish(PORTNUM)) == INVALID_SOCKET) { /* plug in the phone */

perror("establish");
exit(1);
}

for (;;) { /* loop for phone calls */

SOCKET new_sock = accept(s, NULL, NULL);
if (s == INVALID_SOCKET) {
fprintf(stderr, "Error waiting for new connection!\n");
exit(1);
}
do_something(new_sock);
closesocket(new_sock);
}
}

/* this is the function that plays with the socket. it will be called
* after getting a connection.
*/
void do_something(SOCKET s)
{
/* do your thing with the socket here
:
:
*/
}

Figure 3, the call_socket() function.

SOCKET call_socket(const char *hostname, unsigned short portnum)
{ struct sockaddr_in sa;
struct hostent *hp;
SOCKET s;

hp = gethostbyname(hostname);
if (hp == NULL) /* we don't know who this host is */
return INVALID_SOCKET;

memset(&sa,0,sizeof(sa));
memcpy((char *)&sa.sin_addr, hp->h_addr, hp->h_length); /* set address */
sa.sin_family = hp->h_addrtype;
sa.sin_port = htons((u_short)portnum);

s = socket(hp->h_addrtype, SOCK_STREAM, 0);

if (s == INVALID_SOCKET)
return INVALID_SOCKET;

/* try to connect to the specified socket */

if (connect(s, (struct sockaddr *)&sa, sizeof sa) == SOCKET_ERROR) {
closesocket(s);
return INVALID_SOCKET;
}
return s;
}

Client side Server side

(1) Invokes
WSPSendDisconnect() to
conclude session and supply
transaction total.
(2) Gets FD_CLOSE, or WSPRecv()
with a return value of zero or
WSAEDISCON indicating graceful
shutdown in progress.
(3) Invokes WSPRecvDisconnect()
to get client's transaction total.
(4) Computes cumulative grand total
of all transactions.
(5) Invokes WSPSendDisconnect()
to transmit grand total.
(6) Receives FD_CLOSE
(5') Invokes WSPClosesocket()
indication.
(7) Invokes
WSPRecvDisconnect() to receive
and store cumulative grand total
of transactions.
(8) Invokes WSPClosesocket()
 Figure 1

Server side programs:

1. Initialize WSA – WSAStartup().

2. Create a socket – socket().
3. Bind the socket – bind().
4. Listen on the socket – listen().
5. Accept a connection – accept(), connect().
6. Send and receive data – recv(), send(), recvfrom(), sendto().
7. Disconnect – closesocket().

Client side programs:

1. Initialize WSA – WSAStartup().

2. Create a socket – socket().
3. Connect to the server – connect().
4. Send and receive data – recv(), send(), recvfrom(), sendto().
5. Disconnect – closesocket().

. Below is the full source code for the application

we
developed to connect to www.google.com on port
80,
#include <windows.h>
#include <winsock.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#pragma comment(lib, "wsock32.lib")
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
WSADATA WSAData;
struct hostent* HostEnt;
SOCKET Socket;
struct sockaddr_in ServerInfo;
WSAStartup(0x202, &WSAData);
HostEnt = gethostbyname("www.google.com");
if (HostEnt == NULL)
{
printf("Unable to get the host information.\n");

WSACleanup();
return ­1;
}
Socket = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP);
if (Socket == INVALID_SOCKET)
{
printf("Unable to create the socket.\n");
WSACleanup();
return ­1;
}
memset(&ServerInfo, 0, sizeof(ServerInfo));
memcpy(&ServerInfo.sin_addr, HostEnt­>h_addr, HostEnt­>h_length);
ServerInfo.sin_family = HostEnt­>h_addrtype; // Always AF_INET
ServerInfo.sin_port = htons(80);
if (connect(Socket, (struct sockaddr*) &ServerInfo, sizeof(ServerInfo)) == ­1)
{
printf("Unable to connect to the server.\n");
WSACleanup();
return ­1;
}
printf("Successfully connected to the server!\n");
closesocket(Socket);
WSACleanup();
return 0;

Blocking Input/Output

The simplest form of I/O in Windows Sockets 2 is blocking I/O. Sockets are created in
blocking mode by default. Any I/O operation with a blocking socket will not return until
the operation has been fully completed. Thus, any thread can only execute one I/O
operation at a time. For example, if a thread issues a receive operation and no data is
currently available, the thread will block until data becomes available and is placed into
the thread's buffer. Although this is simple, it is not necessarily the most efficient way to
do I/O. Blocking is strongly discouraged due to the non-preemptive nature of the
operating system.