Thread: Structures and shared memory

I'm having a little bit of a problem in an exercise of mine. It's server/client communication and i want the data to be transfered into shared memory so that the client could read them, and data to be written into shared memory as well.
The problem is that my data are into structures. As i know, the shared memory gives you only a pointer *data

Code:

data = shmat(shmid, NULL, 0);

that points at the beggining of the shared memory itself.
how can i point the structure at the beggining of the shared memory and how can i assign a structure to write at the shared memory?
thanks and any help would be appreciated
Stelios

Code:

struct topics {
 int topicID;
 char *baseTopicName;
 struct messages *thema;
} staticTopics[6];
struct messages {
  char *topicName;
  char *sender;
  char *message;
};

Originally Posted by matsp

Other than that, you need to create a "top level" structure that contains all your data, and then have a pointer to that structure, which you assign to the value returned by shmat().

--
Mats

you are referring to a structure pointer? can a common pointer point to a structure?
if i get this right, yes i have a "top level" structure, the one that i have posted here. I initialized it and i want to put it into shared memory. I'm having trouble doing that because staticTopics=data cannot be done.

ok i am going to check this out, thanks matsp,you are great!

hello. i come again with another question - problem.
as the pointer shMemPointerToTopics points to the beggining of the struct,data points there as well. thats in the server.c. What if i want to have a struct, with the same names,with the shared memory so it can be easily accessed in the client.c. I thought, creating the exact name struct on the client.c with the same variables and create another pointer to point to data as well would work. but id doesn't seem to work.
example: on both clients:

Code:

struct toplevel
{
   struct topics staticTopics[6];
};

struct toplevel *shMemPointerToTopics;

...
shMemPointerToTopics = data;

on server mode:

Code:

staticTopics[1].topicID=10;

on client mode

Code:

printf("Server topics %d",staticTopics[1].topicID);

the printf prints 0 which means that the data doesnt change..
any further help would be appreciated.
Stelios

the shared memory:

Code:

key_t key; 
int shmid,semid; 
char *data;
key = 123;	
if ((shmid = shmget(key, 1024, IPC_CREAT | 0600)) == -1)
     printf("error");

data = shmat(shmid, NULL, 0);
 shMemPointerToTopics = data;

a function that is called:

Code:

void StaticTopics(int topNumber){
 staticTopics[topNumber].topicID=321;
 staticTopics[topNumber].baseTopicName="anorthosis";
 staticTopics[topNumber].thema[topNumber].sender="Timour Ketspagia";
 staticTopics[topNumber].thema[topNumber].message="Vradies champions league";
 }

the part which initializes that. i am using the write for testing, if the variables were initialized right.

Code:

childpid = fork(); 
if ( childpid == 0 ) {
StaticTopics(1);
write(connfd,staticTopics[1].thema[1].sender,15);
}