What is the correct way of reading from a TCP socket in C/C++?

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Without knowing your full application it is hard to say what the best way to approach the problem is, but a common technique is to use a header which starts with a fixed length field, which denotes the length of the rest of your message.

Assume that your header consist only of a 4 byte integer which denotes the length of the rest of your message. Then simply do the following.

// This assumes buffer is at least x bytes long,
// and that the socket is blocking.
void ReadXBytes(int socket, unsigned int x, void* buffer)
{
    int bytesRead = 0;
    int result;
    while (bytesRead < x)
    {
        result = read(socket, buffer + bytesRead, x - bytesRead);
        if (result < 1 )
        {
            // Throw your error.
        }

        bytesRead += result;
    }
}

Then later in the code

unsigned int length = 0;
char* buffer = 0;
// we assume that sizeof(length) will return 4 here.
ReadXBytes(socketFileDescriptor, sizeof(length), (void*)(&length));
buffer = new char[length];
ReadXBytes(socketFileDescriptor, length, (void*)buffer);

// Then process the data as needed.

delete [] buffer;

This makes a few assumptions:

  • ints are the same size on the sender and receiver.
  • Endianess is the same on both the sender and receiver.
  • You have control of the protocol on both sides
  • When you send a message you can calculate the length up front.

Since it is common to want to explicitly know the size of the integer you are sending across the network define them in a header file and use them explicitly such as:

// These typedefs will vary across different platforms
// such as linux, win32, OS/X etc, but the idea
// is that a Int8 is always 8 bits, and a UInt32 is always
// 32 bits regardless of the platform you are on.
// These vary from compiler to compiler, so you have to 
// look them up in the compiler documentation.
typedef char Int8;
typedef short int Int16;
typedef int Int32;

typedef unsigned char UInt8;
typedef unsigned short int UInt16;
typedef unsigned int UInt32;

This would change the above to:

UInt32 length = 0;
char* buffer = 0;

ReadXBytes(socketFileDescriptor, sizeof(length), (void*)(&length));
buffer = new char[length];
ReadXBytes(socketFileDescriptor, length, (void*)buffer);

// process

delete [] buffer;

I hope this helps.

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