I'm building a TCP server to learn more about networking. What I have so far is based on various online examples: a server that responds to requests using a series of if, elsif, elsif attempts to match the request to an appropriate response.

It seems like I should be looking to implement an application layer protocol to transfer data (text) between server and client, but I don't want to invent my own protocol or use one that's more complex than I need. Google searches have not resulted in a definitive answer. Is there an existing protocol I should look into?

At the moment my client is just nc to the appropriate server port. I'm assuming I'll have to build a client if I implement an application level protocol

#!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; use POSIX; use IO::Socket; use IO::Select; use Tie::RefHash; my $port = 1800; ### Create the server socket. my $server = IO::Socket::INET->new( LocalPort => $port, Listen => 10, ) or die "can't make server socket: $@\n"; $server->blocking(0); ### Set up structures to track input and output data. my %inbuffer = (); my %outbuffer = (); my %ready = (); tie %ready, "Tie::RefHash"; ### The select loop itself. my $select = IO::Select->new($server); while (1) { # Process sockets that are ready for reading. foreach my $client ($select->can_read(1)) { handle_read($client); } # Process any complete requests. Echo the data back to the client, # by putting the ready lines into the client's output buffer. foreach my $client (keys %ready) { foreach my $request (@{$ready{$client}}) { process_request($client,$request); } delete $ready{$client}; } # Process sockets that are ready for writing. foreach my $client ($select->can_write(1)) { handle_write($client); } } exit; sub process_request { my ($client,$request) = @_; print "Got request: $request"; chomp $request; if ( $request eq "HELLO" ) { $outbuffer{$client} .= "TEST SERVER 0.1\n"; } elsif ($request eq "GET NODES" ) { $outbuffer{$client} .= "NODES: 0 ZERO, 1 ONE, 2 TWO, 4 FOUR\n" +; } elsif ( $request =~ /^JOIN / ) { $outbuffer{$client} .= "JOINING NOT IMPLEMENTED\n"; } elsif ( $request =~ /^MSG / ) { $outbuffer{$client} .= "MSGING NOT IMPLEMENTED\n"; } else { $outbuffer{$client} .= "UNKNOWN COMMAND\n"; } } ### Handle a socket that's ready to be read from. sub handle_read { my $client = shift; # If it's the server socket, accept a new client connection. if ($client == $server) { my $new_client = $server->accept(); $new_client->blocking(0); $select->add($new_client); return; } # Read from an established client socket. my $data = ""; my $rv = $client->recv($data, POSIX::BUFSIZ, 0); # Handle socket errors. unless (defined($rv) and length($data)) { handle_error($client); return; } # Successful read. Buffer the data we got, and parse it into lines. # Place the lines into %ready, where they will be processed later. $inbuffer{$client} .= $data; while ($inbuffer{$client} =~ s/(.*\n)//) { push @{$ready{$client}}, $1; } } ### Handle a socket that's ready to be written to. sub handle_write { my $client = shift; # Skip this client if there's nothing to write. return unless exists $outbuffer{$client}; # Attempt to write pending data to the client. my $rv = $client->send($outbuffer{$client}, 0); unless (defined $rv) { warn "I was told I could write, but I can't.\n"; return; } # Successful write. Remove what was sent from the output buffer. if ( $rv == length($outbuffer{$client}) or $! == POSIX::EWOULDBLOCK) { substr($outbuffer{$client}, 0, $rv) = ""; delete $outbuffer{$client} unless length $outbuffer{$client}; return; } # Otherwise there was an error. handle_error($client); } ### Handle client errors. Clean up after the dead socket. sub handle_error { my $client = shift; delete $inbuffer{$client}; delete $outbuffer{$client}; delete $ready{$client}; $select->remove($client); close $client; }


In reply to TCP Server: Beyond echoing request by jeremywakeman

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.