Access to internet with C++

[FlashDrive]

Hi there,
I would like to know how to access internet with a easy C++-program. I'd need it for my AI I'm programming at the moment...
Thanking you in anticipation,
FlashDrive

[S6k9GNh0]

"Internet Access" is provided through "network sockets" which is provided through an API provided by the OS the application is running on. There are various solutions for cross-platform solutions such as Boost.ASIO, a basic wrapper around WinSock, and many others.

Beej's guide sucks and is rather outdated last time I checked. I would suggest trying a wrapper over BSD sockets rather than using BSD sockets directly anyways as BSD sockets proves to be unintuitive now a days.

[FlashDrive]

thanks a lot.

[FlashDrive]

If you might also add a sample code, I'd be very, very happy ^^

[S6k9GNh0]

Eh... using synchronous ASIO which is what I'm familiar with, here's a basic example of an echo server below (which is VERY NAIVE and probably isn't the way to go about network IO):

#include <boost/asio.hpp>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <iostream>
#include <array>

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    using namespace boost;

    asio::io_service ioSrvc;
    asio::ip::tcp::socket ioSocket(ioSrvc);
    boost::asio::ip::tcp::endpoint endpoint(
        boost::asio::ip::address::from_string(argv[1]), atoi(argv[2]));
    std::array<char, 30> ioBuffer;
    ioBuffer.fill(0);

    ioSocket.connect(endpoint);

    for (;;) {
        ioSocket.read_some(ioBuffer);
        std::cout << ioBuffer.data() << std::endl;
        asio::write(ioSocket, ioBuffer);
    }
}

This is untested, make sure it works correctly. ASIO also provide its own examples but a lot of them are out of date apparently.

[FlashDrive]

cool! thx a lot