gen_tcp

Examples

The following example illustrates usage of the {active,once} option and multiple accepts by implementing a server as a number of worker processes doing accept on one single listen socket. The start/2 function takes the number of worker processes as well as a port number to listen for incoming connections on. If LPort is specified as 0, an ephemeral portnumber is used, why the start function returns the actual portnumber allocated:

start(Num,LPort) ->
    case gen_tcp:listen(LPort,[{active, false},{packet,2}]) of
        {ok, ListenSock} ->
            start_servers(Num,ListenSock),
            {ok, Port} = inet:port(ListenSock),
            Port;
        {error,Reason} ->
            {error,Reason}
    end.

start_servers(0,_) ->
    ok;
start_servers(Num,LS) ->
    spawn(?MODULE,server,[LS]),
    start_servers(Num-1,LS).

server(LS) ->
    case gen_tcp:accept(LS) of
        {ok,S} ->
            loop(S),
            server(LS);
        Other ->
            io:format("accept returned ~w - goodbye!~n",[Other]),
            ok
    end.

loop(S) ->
    inet:setopts(S,[{active,once}]),
    receive
        {tcp,S,Data} ->
            Answer = process(Data), % Not implemented in this example
            gen_tcp:send(S,Answer),
            loop(S);
        {tcp_closed,S} ->
            io:format("Socket ~w closed [~w]~n",[S,self()]),
            ok
    end.

A simple client could look like this:

client(PortNo,Message) ->
    {ok,Sock} = gen_tcp:connect("localhost",PortNo,[{active,false},
                                                    {packet,2}]),
    gen_tcp:send(Sock,Message),
    A = gen_tcp:recv(Sock,0),
    gen_tcp:close(Sock),
    A.

The fact that the send call does not accept a timeout option, is because timeouts on send is handled through the socket option send_timeout. The behavior of a send operation with no receiver is in a very high degree defined by the underlying TCP stack, as well as the network infrastructure. If one wants to write code that handles a hanging receiver that might eventually cause the sender to hang on a send call, one writes code like the following.

Consider a process that receives data from a client process that is to be forwarded to a server on the network. The process has connected to the server via TCP/IP and does not get any acknowledge for each message it sends, but has to rely on the send timeout option to detect that the other end is unresponsive. We could use the send_timeout option when connecting:

    ...
    {ok,Sock} = gen_tcp:connect(HostAddress, Port,
                                [{active,false},
                                 {send_timeout, 5000},
                                 {packet,2}]),
                    loop(Sock), % See below
    ...    

In the loop where requests are handled, we can now detect send timeouts:

loop(Sock) ->
    receive
        {Client, send_data, Binary} ->
            case gen_tcp:send(Sock,[Binary]) of
                {error, timeout} ->
                    io:format("Send timeout, closing!~n",
                              []),
                    handle_send_timeout(), % Not implemented here
                    Client ! {self(),{error_sending, timeout}},
                    %% Usually, it's a good idea to give up in case of a 
                    %% send timeout, as you never know how much actually 
                    %% reached the server, maybe only a packet header?!
                    gen_tcp:close(Sock);
                {error, OtherSendError} ->
                    io:format("Some other error on socket (~p), closing",
                              [OtherSendError]),
                    Client ! {self(),{error_sending, OtherSendError}},
                    gen_tcp:close(Sock);
                ok ->
                    Client ! {self(), data_sent},
                    loop(Sock)
            end
    end.    

Usually it would suffice to detect timeouts on receive, as most protocols include some sort of acknowledgment from the server, but if the protocol is strictly one way, the send_timeout option comes in handy!