Book Image

Hands-On Network Programming with C

By : Lewis Van Winkle
Book Image

Hands-On Network Programming with C

By: Lewis Van Winkle

Overview of this book

Network programming enables processes to communicate with each other over a computer network, but it is a complex task that requires programming with multiple libraries and protocols. With its support for third-party libraries and structured documentation, C is an ideal language to write network programs. Complete with step-by-step explanations of essential concepts and practical examples, this C network programming book begins with the fundamentals of Internet Protocol, TCP, and UDP. You’ll explore client-server and peer-to-peer models for information sharing and connectivity with remote computers. The book will also cover HTTP and HTTPS for communicating between your browser and website, and delve into hostname resolution with DNS, which is crucial to the functioning of the modern web. As you advance, you’ll gain insights into asynchronous socket programming and streams, and explore debugging and error handling. Finally, you’ll study network monitoring and implement security best practices. By the end of this book, you’ll have experience of working with client-server applications and be able to implement new network programs in C. The code in this book is compatible with the older C99 version as well as the latest C18 and C++17 standards. You’ll work with robust, reliable, and secure code that is portable across operating systems, including Winsock sockets for Windows and POSIX sockets for Linux and macOS.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
Title Page
Dedication
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Index

A simple SMTP client program


With a basic understanding of both SMTP and the email format, we are ready to program a simple email client. Our client takes as inputs: the destination email server, the recipient's address, the sender's address, the email subject line, and the email body text.

Our program begins by including the necessary headers with the following statements:

/*smtp_send.c*/

#include "chap08.h"
#include <ctype.h>
#include <stdarg.h>

We also define the following two constants to make buffer allocation and checking easier:

/*smtp_send.c continued*/

#define MAXINPUT 512
#define MAXRESPONSE 1024

Our program needs to prompt the user for input several times. This is required to get the email server's hostname, the recipient's address, and so on. C provides the gets() function for this purpose but gets() is deprecated in the latest C standard. Therefore, we implement our own function.

The following function, get_input(), prompts for user input:

/*smtp_send.c continued*/

void...