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I am programming a Client/Server application for my project in C++. The whole application protocol was given or discussed by the working group. The main idea is that we have 3 protocols.

  1. Text-protocol: send and receive some information in string format between client and server.
  2. Binary-protocol: client sends continiously some status data to server.
  3. Binary-protocol: client sends continiously some data like sound/video/images/text

All Protocols should run on different ports. I implemented a Socket-Class, which is responsible to create and listen socket, accept the connection from the client. Also there is a function to receive/send string-based data and receive/send binary-based data.

In the next step I wanted to define 3 Classes. Each of them should be responsible for creating one socket in new Thread and responsible for the protocol, which was defined for that port (s. 1-3). So at the end I will get 3 Sockets (1 Socket for one Port).

My question is, if I think in right direction? Maybe you can recommend my some design patterns for using different application protocols. It would be great if you can recommend me some projects or code, which can be similar with my project.

Thank you.

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  • yeah, it looks like you're on the right track. Are you using boost library? Commented Jun 17, 2011 at 17:44
  • actually not. because the specification of each protocol is really specific. :-) and I am not so good in the C++. So it can be really hard to learn language and use some library. At least for me. I found really good book for Network programming. So I can implement all what I want by myself :-) Commented Jun 17, 2011 at 17:46
  • you can use boost for generic sockets, it will make things easier for you and let you concentrate on the project-specific functionality, but its up to you. I do agree with the responder below though that a generic socket implementation should be common to all the protocols and separate of them. Commented Jun 17, 2011 at 18:09
  • So nobody knows some example of similary projects? :-) Commented Jun 17, 2011 at 18:23

2 Answers 2

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You should decouple your socket class from the 3 protocol handlers - don't have methods for both text and binary data handling on the Socket or you unintentionally encourage people to mix and match data types over the same socket, which is clearly not what you want.

Your socket should provide simple connect/disconnect, data transmission and receipt functionality, and the decoding and encoding of sent/received data is then done in a different object, likely picked from 3 new classes (one per protocol).

On a general note, I question the use of text data. It's inefficient compared to virtually any serialization library you could name. You could be trading a little extra debuggability for a lot of hard-written data parsing and error checking code, and concomitant CPU cycle wastage. If the text data is fairly simple (not actually structured like XML, say) then this is less of a concern.

Protocol 2. might be implementable using UDP rather than TCP, if the status info is not mission-critical. That's one less connection you'd have to manage.

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Thank you for your answer. Right I can make send/receive function more abstract. And all decoding/enconding in each Class, which are responsible for Protocol implementation. I am not sure that I can use some serialization libraries, because our specification of protocol is really specific. :-)
yeah, the text is just one sentence. somethink like client writes "I am alive". All protocols should be TCP.
I can't agree with the serialization comments. There's nothing in the post to indicate that the data is binary. He states it's text and there's nothing wrong with transferring text directly.
@Jay - agreed, in the context as now clarified by OP. If the text was XML or similar heavily structured data that just happens to be sent as text, I would prefer serialization.
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You might consider using enet. It does reliable and unreliable UDP communications and will do most of the heavy lifting of the communications for you.

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