Thread: Sending image

  1. #16
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    Ok thank you Salem but its still not too clear to me how these functions work.

    For example when exactly a recv() function stops recieving?

    I imagine its something like the send() function knows how many bytes it has to send (because we have to precise it) and it gets transmitted to the recv function and when it recieved the number of bytes it stops recieving.

    Because if i follow your reasoning that it would recieve every other send() function, it should never stop recieving.

    So there must be something that tells him to stop.

    Otherwise in every code there would be extra delimiter characters added to it and i never see it in any code.

    Btw i managed to fix the code by adding Sleep() on the sender side but i as i read everywhere its not the real solution.

    I just cant believe they made it so complicated to send and recieve data.
    And every code i see is like mine or even worse because theyre not even sending the size of the file before.
    So how come its working for everybody and you telling me to send delimiter characters in addition?
    Last edited by Ducky; 08-14-2009 at 06:36 AM.
    Using Windows 10 with Code Blocks and MingW.

  2. #17
    and the hat of int overfl Salem's Avatar
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    If the connection is lost half-way though, recv() will return 0 at some point, and there will be no more bytes.

    Without the length up-front, how would you know whether you had received the whole image or not?
    If you dance barefoot on the broken glass of undefined behaviour, you've got to expect the occasional cut.
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  3. #18
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    If the connection is lost either way you are not getting what you wanted so its not worth considering.

    Im talking about when everything is going well.

    When does the recv() function stop recieving?
    Using Windows 10 with Code Blocks and MingW.

  4. #19
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    Ok i understood that the TCP/IP stack sends data as he pleases.

    Now after what kind of character could i search that doesnt exist in a binary file?

    Does the \0 character only exist at the end of files and streams?
    Using Windows 10 with Code Blocks and MingW.

  5. #20
    spurious conceit MK27's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ducky View Post
    Does the \0 character only exist at the end of files and streams?
    No; AFAIK the main point of using a "binary" vs. "text" stream is that C strings are terminated by '\0' whereas binary data can contain a 0 as part of the actual data. So there is no terminating character.

    With TCP/IP networking, there is a Total Length field that is part of the IP header. You can use that to decide how much is supposed to be received and loop until completed.

    See here:
    http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc791.txt
    and just keep searching for "Total Length".
    C programming resources:
    GNU C Function and Macro Index -- glibc reference manual
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    Current ISO draft standard
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    3 (different) GNU debugger tutorials: #1 -- #2 -- #3
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  6. #21
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    Thank you MK27!

    I checked out the link you gave me:

    Total Length
    The internet header field Total Length is the length of the
    datagram in octets including internet header and data.

    So its not the data size and btw i dont even know how to access it.

    Looks very complicated. How come that there are hundreds of networking codes and tutorials
    and i havent seen one explaining this?
    Using Windows 10 with Code Blocks and MingW.

  7. #22
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    Btw i discovered the problem with my code.

    Even the size of the first recv()' buffer,
    (the one that recieves only the size of the file, which is just a number so it cant be bigger than 4.000.000.000 which is only 10 characters long so: char buf [10] would be enough)
    must be the size of the data that the second recv() will recieve.

    This completely not making sense but its like that or otherwise the program crashes.
    Using Windows 10 with Code Blocks and MingW.

  8. #23
    spurious conceit MK27's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ducky View Post
    So its not the data size and btw i dont even know how to access it.

    Looks very complicated. How come that there are hundreds of networking codes and tutorials
    and i havent seen one explaining this?
    Well, the tcp/ip header is a constant size so if you subtract that you will have the data size. Accessing it is difficult (you can use pcap), IMO not really worth it.

    The reason is: tcp/ip networking is in practice done using some further "protocol"; if you were communicating with an HTTP internet server, you would use the HTTP protocol, which means everything has a http header including a "Content-Length:" field. This is read as plain text in the first part of an http transmission.

    So to send an image using HTTP, you must first send a header, then the image data. If you are writing your own client/server thing, you don't have to use HTTP, but you make up your own "protocol" to perform the same purpose. The way I usually do it is this: Send the transmission length as a plain text number before the rest of the data. Then at the other end you just pull it off like this:
    Code:
    int len;
    sscanf(buffer,"%d",len);
    So from the transmission end, you just send a short string with the length of the data before you send the data.

    You can also send an int (four bytes) but a test string is easier.
    Last edited by MK27; 08-15-2009 at 11:24 AM.
    C programming resources:
    GNU C Function and Macro Index -- glibc reference manual
    The C Book -- nice online learner guide
    Current ISO draft standard
    CCAN -- new CPAN like open source library repository
    3 (different) GNU debugger tutorials: #1 -- #2 -- #3
    cpwiki -- our wiki on sourceforge

  9. #24
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    Thank you MK27!

    sscanf is a great function, i didnt know about it.

    Its great because it retrieves the number whatever is the size.
    Using Windows 10 with Code Blocks and MingW.

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