Trying to receive from a multicast address

Hi,

I've been trying to write up a program that sends and receives 'tweets' using multicast. I've got the sending part working but for some reason I can't seem to get the receiving part working.
For receiving this is what I've got:
insert

Code:

void receiveTweets(void) {
	int status;
	// open a socket
   SOCKET s = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, 0);
   struct sockaddr_in receive;
   receive.sin_family = AF_INET;
   receive.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr("224.28.99.66");
   receive.sin_addr.s_addr = INADDR_ANY;
   receive.sin_port = htons(33118);

	status = bind(s, (struct sockaddr *)&receive, sizeof(struct sockaddr_in));

   if(status != 0) 
	{
		printf("Bind unsuccessful");
	}
	else 
	{

		struct ip_mreq mreq; //PROVIDE MULTICAST GROUP INFO
		mreq.imr_multiaddr.s_addr = inet_addr("224.28.99.66");
		mreq.imr_interface.s_addr = INADDR_ANY;

setsockopt (s, IPPROTO_IP, IP_ADD_MEMBERSHIP, (const char*)&mreq, sizeof(mreq));
		
	receive.sin_family = AF_INET;
	receive.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr("224.28.99.66");
		
	char buff[MTU];
	int bytes = -1;

		while (1)
		{
			status = recvfrom(s, buff, strlen(buff), 0, (struct sockaddr*)&receive, (int *)sizeof(struct sockaddr_in));
			if(status > 0) 
			{
				printf("Received: \"%s\"", buff);
			}
		}	

	}
	closesocket(s);

   return;
}

This code seems to have recvfrom return -1 (the errror) but I can't seem to see where I'm going wrong. Can anyone help me??

Thanks

Trying to receive strlen(buff) characters could be interesting, because who has any idea what size that is? Perhaps you meant sizeof instead. And why not check for the error you get with errno, if you do actually receive -1?

i used visual studio to debug it and it kept giving the value of status -1. i also tried using int WSAGetLastError(void); and the error codes kept changing. as for strlen(buff) i thought that recvfrom required the length of the buffer..

It does require the length of the buffer. strlen is a nice thing to have, but it is not the length of the buffer. The length of the buffer is how many bytes of memory you have set aside for the buffer, and does not change just by putting something in it. strlen, however, is the length of the string you have placed in the buffer; and if you haven't (yet) placed a string in the buffer, then you could get a very large (or very negative, if you're really unlucky) value for strlen.

If you're getting many error codes from WSAGetLastError, then that mean you have many wrong things. Or you might just be getting a lot of EAGAIN. You need to look at what the codes mean.

ok great thanks for your help...i'll give it a go..