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Simple (stupid) question:
I just have been tinkering around with sockets, and I want to know what message I have tp send to request a webpage using send(). For example, I have a php module that inputs data like so:
http://example.com/mymodule.php?name...ress=123street
I don't really need to get the webpage back--all it really needs to do is send the request, so that the php module can input the data into a mysql database.
Any help would be appreciated. :)
I think submiting information to a php script is done with the GET method.
Try this.
Code:HOST example.com (\r\n)
GET /mymodule.php?name=joe&address=123street http/1.1(\r\n)
(\r\n)
(\r\n)
After connecting to my.domain.com:
You might be able to then close the connection entirely... you might also want to just read off the return from the server to a meaningless buffer. (Shouldn't be much, since it's your script...)Code:GET /mypage.php?name=me&style=cool&score=1000 HTTP/1.1\r\n
Host: my.domain.com\r\n
Connection: Close\r\n
\r\n
Use ethereal to capture the network activity when you do this with a browser.
Then compare that with what you get from your program.
Thanks, I just realized that I might want to also get data back (just the html) from a webpage. :rolleyes: What do I do there?
Don't close the connection and call recv untill you've got all the data.
OK, I've got a slight problem here.
This was taken from an online sock tutorial, which I have been using. Now I'm a bit confused. I know that the HTTP port is 80, and that there are lots of ports that are below 1024! When I try calling bind() on port 80, it fails, just like this said it would. What do I do? :(Quote:
Another thing to watch out for when calling bind(): don't go underboard with your port numbers. All ports below 1024 are RESERVED (unless you're the superuser)! You can have any port number above that, right up to 65535 (provided they aren't already being used by another program.)
If you're trying to connect to a HTTP server on port 80 you don't need to call bind. You need to fill out a SOCKADDR_IN structure (don't forget to call htons() on the port number).
Yeah, that was a stupid question of mine. The only reason you would want to bind the http port is if you're creating a web server, in which case you would have super-user access anyway.
Yet another question: It doesn't seem to be working. Could it be that I am using stream sockets when I really should be using datagrams?
No, stream sockets should work. Posting some code would allow better help. Getting a webpage is essentially:
1) Connect to the server.
2) Send your HTTP request & headers (what I posted above... this can get more complicated. Look up the HTTP specs / use Ethereal to do capturing and see for yourself)
3) Wait & get the response.
The double newline signals the end of the headers/request. Then you just read off everything the server sends you. The result will also contain headers - these are separated from the content with a double newline as well.
Another thing to watch out for (but unlikely to be your problem now) is transfer-enconding... the response will have "Transfer-Encoding: --something--" in it... some pages are compressed, some are "chunked" (I think Google's page is).
At any rate: Where is your program failing? Connecting, sending, receiving? Do you get odd results, no results, or does your program crash? As long as we (the readers) can't answer these questions, we probably can't offer much help. Code snippits, and your results, will aid greatly.
OK, sorry about that. I figured out on my own (sigh) that yes, there does have to be a double newline for the server to return information. That solved my problem. Another thing is: when I call recv(), it works, but I notice that it's in synchronous mode. This is not particularly useful, as I do not always know when a packet is going to be sent to the program. There's a way, looking at all the programs that do this.
Another (unrelated) question: I notice that games like Halo can get a list of current servers even on a LAN where there is no central server that keeps track of all the other servers. How does Halo and other games do this? (there's probably some kernal call or something, but I'm too lazy to look it up)
You can change a socket to non-blocking (asynchronous) mode with the ioctlsocket() function. This function can also be used to tell you the amount of data waiting to be recieved and then you can recv() that amount so you're not waiting around doing nothing.Quote:
Originally Posted by joeprogrammer
This is done by sending a UDP packet the to the broadcast address which means it is readable by every host on the LAN. Hosts with the program installed will respond to the program that sent it. I believe the broadcast address is xxx.xxx.xxx.255 (The xs is your subnet address) I havn't ever done this though.Quote:
Another (unrelated) question: I notice that games like Halo can get a list of current servers even on a LAN where there is no central server that keeps track of all the other servers. How does Halo and other games do this? (there's probably some kernal call or something, but I'm too lazy to look it up)
Hey, that's a Windows-only function! :) After a little bit of googling though, I found the open-source version, ioctl:Quote:
You can change a socket to non-blocking (asynchronous) mode with the ioctlsocket() function.
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/...ons/ioctl.html
Anyway, thanks for all the help, I think I can manage socket programming now!
Oh sorry I thought it was the same on both platforms.
I believe a simply #define in a header file can cancel portability problems. For the purpose of making sockets non-blocking, I think the differences between ioctl and ioctlsocket are insignificant. Haven't tested this much though.