send structure using socket

[pradeepthundiyil]

how to send a structure with different data types using udp socket ? ? i am trying to send an ATM cell which has header fields and data using udp socket and receive it on server .

[Rubberman]

The problem with sending binary data structures over the network is manifold:

1. You don't know if the structure is compatible with the hardware/software on the other end (word sizes, structure padding/alignment, word endianess, etc).
2. Because of #1, you need to encode the structure to some network-neutral format when it's sent and decode it on the receiving end.
3. There are many means to accomplish #2, including XML (verbose, but human-readable).

You can eliminate this cruft if you are 100% certain that the sending and receiving ends are 100% binary compatible and that the applications were built on both ends with the same compiler and linker settings. Good luck in that!

[stealth86]

What you should do is serialize the information in the structure into a generic format, send that over the network, and recreate the object on the other side.

Trying to do the equivalent of a memcpy of the struct over a socket will probably fail horribly.

I suggest serializing to XML. There's lots of libraries available to work with it.