Book Image

Hands-On Network Programming with C# and .NET Core

By : Sean Burns
Book Image

Hands-On Network Programming with C# and .NET Core

By: Sean Burns

Overview of this book

The C# language and the .NET Core application framework provide the tools and patterns required to make the discipline of network programming as intuitive and enjoyable as any other aspect of C# programming. With the help of this book, you will discover how the C# language and the .NET Core framework make this possible. The book begins by introducing the core concepts of network programming, and what distinguishes this field of programming from other disciplines. After this, you will gain insights into concepts such as transport protocols, sockets and ports, and remote data streams, which will provide you with a holistic understanding of how network software fits into larger distributed systems. The book will also explore the intricacies of how network software is implemented in a more explicit context, by covering sockets, connection strategies such as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP), asynchronous processing, and threads. You will then be able to work through code examples for TCP servers, web APIs served over HTTP, and a Secure Shell (SSH) client. By the end of this book, you will have a good understanding of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) network stack, the various communication protocols for that stack, and the skills that are essential to implement those protocols using the C# programming language and the .NET Core framework.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Foundations of Network Architecture
6
Section 2: Communicating Over Networks
10
Section 3: Application Protocols and Connection Handling
15
Section 4: Security, Stability, and Scalability
21
Section 5: Advanced Subjects

HTTP in .NET

In each of the previous chapters, we explored the fundamental building blocks with which network software is built. In this chapter, we'll use those building blocks to construct an application that leverages the most common network protocol, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). We'll re-examine where in the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) network stack HTTP falls, and why it is categorized as such. We'll more deeply consider the conventions around HTTP requests and responses, and spend some time exploring request, response, and content headers. We'll demonstrate how to use standard headers for specifying the content you want from an external HTTP resource, and how custom headers can be used to toggle specific features and functions of your application. Lastly, we'll explore how to serve content over the protocol to service HTTP requests...