Know of any cross platform socket library (windows & Linux) in C?

Question

I am looking to do socket communications (listen, accept, connect, recv, send, disconnect) in both linux and windows. My project is in C, so unless someone can think of a way for me to integrate C++ libraries into a C project the library will have to be in C as well.

Ultimately, I would like the library to have ipv6 support and non-blocking mode, however, these things are not essential.

Does anyone know of any libraries/cross-platform example code? Even just large code snippets would help. So far the few socket libraries I have found have been in C++.

Christoph · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-08T22:51:34.870

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Off-hand, I can think of four libraries:

GLib Channels from the GLib framework can abstract socket usage, but you'll need platform-specific code for socket creation.
libuv is a platform abstraction layer for node.js and handles, among other things, sockets and async IO.
The Apache Portable Runtime also contains network routines.
The Netscape Portable Runtime does socket manipulation as well.

edited Feb 08 '12 at 22:51

answered Feb 08 '12 at 21:20

Christoph

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Thankyou very much, thats an awesome start. At the moment, im looking at libuv, as it seems to have a good balance between size/simplicity and efficiency. Out of curiosity, what were your search terms that yielded those results? or did you know of them already? – 64bit_twitchyliquid Feb 08 '12 at 21:34
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@64bit_twitchyliquid: I don't remember when I first came across GLib, but in my mind, it occupies the place of a standard lib for C more in tune with what other languages offer; I found APR and NSPR when I looked for a platform-abstraction lib and I know of libuv because it's used by the Rust programming language; actually, all of these except libuv are listed on http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/portability-libs/ , the first result of a google search for *C cross platform abstraction lib* – Christoph Feb 08 '12 at 21:58

Alexander Saprykin · Answer 2 · 2016-06-13T19:54:46.027

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The plibsys library provides all the requested features: cross-platform and portable, lightweight, provides socket IPv4 and IPv6 support as well as many other useful things like multithreading. Works with sockets in non-blocking mode (though you can switch to a blocking one, too). Has quite a good documentation with the test code examples.

edited Jun 13 '16 at 19:54

answered Jun 13 '16 at 13:56

Alexander Saprykin

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score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 08 '12 at 21:25

I don't know one library that complies both Windows and Linux but I think winsock is similar enough to Linux socket programming.

In particular it supplies you 'select()' and the other functions mentioned. I guess you will need a very thin #ifdef wrapper to avoid type casting warnings.

See here the winsock page for select

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 11 '12 at 11:30

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check HS Sockets C Source Library for Windows and Linux

edited Jun 11 '12 at 11:30

Darshana

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answered Feb 09 '12 at 00:13

Chuck

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score -2 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 24 '13 at 22:55

Ptlib provides cross platform C++ code that works well for sockets. www.opalvoip.org

Copes nicely with threads. Some support for mac and BSD. Under active development and maintainance. MPL Core library in Ekiga - the preferred desktop app that does SIP & H.323

For windows - it compiles with MSVC. for linux, it compiles with gcc autoconf make etc.

OK, it is C++, but you can work with that... Have a the source inside ptlib/samples - there are many examples of using ptlib there.

He was asking specifically for a C library. – Chase Jul 31 '14 at 23:07 — Chase, Jul 31 '14 at 23:07

score -3 · Answer 6 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

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The Boost library includes these features.

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Community

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answered Jun 11 '12 at 10:55

Salvo

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Know of any cross platform socket library (windows & Linux) in C?

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