accessing serial COM port using c++

[tejashs]

hello,
can i access a serial COM port to send and receive data.....
are there any built in classes or functions...

[coder777]

can i access a serial COM port to send and receive data.....

Sure you can.

are there any built in classes or functions...

Depends for what OS do you want to develop. .Net or ASIO/Boost provides support for that.

[tejashs]

for windows7...

[tejashs]

but using it in command line might be enough...
i need to send and receive pieces of strings and characters...
i dunno anything about

.Net or ASIO/Boost

i only know c,c++, and some simple python

[coder777]

Well, accessing the serial port is not quite trivial. Maybe it's the best to use the (win-) API directly:

To open the port use CreateFile like so:

HANDLE h = CreateFile("COM1", GENERIC_READ | GENERIC_WRITE, 0, 0, OPEN_EXISTING, FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, 0);
...
CloseHandle(h );

To change the settings of the serial port you need the 'DCB' like so:

DCB dcb;
memset(&dcb, 0, sizeof(dcb));
dcb.DCBlength = sizeof(DCB);

dcb.fBinary = true;
dcb.BaudRate = CBR_9600;
dcb.ByteSize = 8;
dcb.StopBits = ONESTOPBIT;
dcb.Parity   = NOPARITY;
dcb.fParity  = false;

dcb.fDtrControl = DTR_CONTROL_ENABLE;
dcb.fTXContinueOnXoff = true;
dcb.fRtsControl = RTS_CONTROL_HANDSHAKE;
dcb.XoffChar = 0x13;
dcb.XonChar = 0x11;
dcb.XoffLim = 10;
dcb.XonLim = 10;

if(SetCommState(h, &dcb) != FALSE)
  ...

The 'DCB' structure is extensive. You need to figure out all the elements