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

Installing Homebrew and the C compiler


Setup on macOS will be simplified greatly if we use the Homebrew package manager.

The Homebrew package manager makes installing a C compiler and development libraries much easier than it would otherwise be.

To install Homebrew, navigate your web browser to https://brew.sh/:

The website gives the command to install Homebrew. You will need to open a new Terminal window and paste in the command:

Just follow the instructions until Homebrew has finished installing.

Installing Homebrew will also cause the Xcode command-line tools to install. This means you'll have a C compiler ready to go. Test that you have a working C compiler with the gcc --version command:

Note that macOS installs the Clang compiler, but aliases it as GCC. In any case, it will work fine for our purposes.

Git should also have been installed. You can verify this with git --version: