NetworkSocket

This is an archived page! This page is very old and the content is not up to date. Not everything (if any) which is written here will be in the final game!

This module will probably need a multithreading implementation. ​Here is a good howto about multithreaded SDL and mutexes. A even better guide for C++ itself: ​here.

Next Steps:

This is a small description of the NetworkSocket class

/* public: */

/*
 * The standard constructor: does nothing, thumb
 */
 NetworkSocket();


/*
 * The constructor that creates the new socket
 * 
 * @param address: the address information (SDL_net.h definition)
 * @param type: the type of the Socket: Server/Client
 */
 NetworkSocket(IPaddress address, NodeType type);


 /*
  * This function establishes a TCP/UDP connection to a given server (function argument).
  * It is called by the NetworkStream. It creates a TCP/UDP socket for the connection.
  */
 void connectToServer(IPaddress ip);


 /*
  * Tells the NetworkSocket to listen on a specific port for incoming connections.
  * NetworkSocket::writeBytes(...) will have no effect until there is a valuable connection.
  */
 void listen(unsigned int port);


 /*
  * Tears down a TCP/UDP connection. 
  */
 void disconnect();


 /*
  * reconnects, restablishes the connection
  */
 void reconnect();


 /*
  * This function writes some bytes (data) to the network connection (if the connection is already
  * estabilhed) otherwise it just does nothing (silently discarding the data). And writes some 
  * warnings
  */
 int writeBytes(byte* data, int length);


 /*
  * Reads in the bytes from the network interface and passes it to the NetworkStream.
  * This function must internaly be implemented/connected as a thread, since the read
  * functions of many network libraries are blocking an would therefore block the whole
  * program.
  * From outside, the thread shouldn't be accessible at all.
  * @param data: pointer to the NetworkStream data buffer
  * @param length: length of the data to read
  * returns: length of data read 
  */
 int readBytes(byte* data, int length);


 /*
  * Reads in the bytes from the network interface and passes it to the NetworkStream.
  * This function must internaly be implemented/connected as a thread, since the read
  * functions of many network libraries are blocking an would therefore block the whole
  * program.
  * From outside, the thread shouldn't be accessible at all.
  * @param data: pointer to the NetworkStream data buffer
  * @param length: length of the data to read
  * returns: 0 if the length of data was not available, else returns length as the number of bytes read
  */
 int readBlock(byte* data, int length);