Sockets

&reftitle.intro; The socket extension implements a low-level interface to the socket communication functions based on the popular BSD sockets, providing the possibility to act as a socket server as well as a client. For a more generic client-side socket interface, see stream_socket_client, stream_socket_server, fsockopen, and pfsockopen. When using these functions, it is important to remember that while many of them have identical names to their C counterparts, they often have different declarations. Please be sure to read the descriptions to avoid confusion. Those unfamiliar with socket programming can find a lot of useful material in the appropriate Unix man pages, and there is a great deal of tutorial information on socket programming in C on the web, much of which can be applied, with slight modifications, to socket programming in PHP. The UNIX Socket FAQ might be a good start. &warn.experimental;

&reftitle.required; &no.requirement;

&reference.sockets.configure;

&reftitle.runtime; &no.config;

&reftitle.resources; &no.resource;

&reference.sockets.constants;

The socket extension was written to provide a useable interface to the powerful BSD sockets. Care has been taken that the functions work equally well on Win32 and Unix implementations. Almost all of the sockets functions may fail under certain conditions and therefore emit an E_WARNING message describing the error. Sometimes this doesn't happen to the desire of the developer. For example the function socket_read may suddenly emit an E_WARNING message because the connection broke unexpectedly. It's common to suppress the warning with the @-operator and catch the error code within the application with the socket_last_error function. You may call the socket_strerror function with this error code to retrieve a string describing the error. See their description for more information. The E_WARNING messages generated by the socket extension are in english though the retrieved error message will appear depending on the current locale (LC_MESSAGES):

&reftitle.examples; This example shows a simple talkback server. Change the address and port variables to suit your setup and execute. You may then connect to the server with a command similar to: telnet 192.168.1.53 10000 (where the address and port match your setup). Anything you type will then be output on the server side, and echoed back to you. To disconnect, enter 'quit'. ]]> This example shows a simple, one-shot HTTP client. It simply connects to a page, submits a HEAD request, echoes the reply, and exits. TCP/IP Connection\n"; /* Get the port for the WWW service. */ $service_port = getservbyname ('www', 'tcp'); /* Get the IP address for the target host. */ $address = gethostbyname ('www.example.com'); /* Create a TCP/IP socket. */ $socket = socket_create (AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0); if ($socket < 0) { echo "socket_create() failed: reason: " . socket_strerror ($socket) . "\n"; } else { echo "OK.\n"; } echo "Attempting to connect to '$address' on port '$service_port'..."; $result = socket_connect ($socket, $address, $service_port); if ($result < 0) { echo "socket_connect() failed.\nReason: ($result) " . socket_strerror($result) . "\n"; } else { echo "OK.\n"; } $in = "HEAD / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n"; $out = ''; echo "Sending HTTP HEAD request..."; socket_write ($socket, $in, strlen ($in)); echo "OK.\n"; echo "Reading response:\n\n"; while ($out = socket_read ($socket, 2048)) { echo $out; } echo "Closing socket..."; socket_close ($socket); echo "OK.\n\n"; ?> ]]>

&reference.sockets.functions;