Fastest way to send multiple char array over TCP - c++

Question

I'm working on a webserver framework in C++ mostly for my own understanding, but I want to optimize it as well.
My question is is it faster to write multiple char arrays to the TCP connection for every html response or to spend the time to concatenate up front and only write to the TCP connection once. I was thinking about benchmarking it, but I am not quite sure how to go about it.
This is my first post on stackoverflow, although I have benefitted from the website very often!
Thanks!
Here is what I am talking about for sending many char arrays individually. The alternate would be concatenate all of these char arrays into one char array then sending that.
int main() {
sockaddr_in address;
int server_handle;
int addrlen = sizeof(address);
if ((server_handle = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0)) < 0)
{
perror("cannot create socket");
exit(0);
}
memset((char *) &address, 0, sizeof(address));
address.sin_family = AF_INET;
address.sin_addr.s_addr = htonl(INADDR_ANY);
address.sin_port = htons(PORT);
if (bind(server_handle, (sockaddr *) &address, (socklen_t) addrlen) < 0)
{
perror("bind failed");
exit(0);
}
if (listen(server_handle, 3) < 0)
{
perror("In listen");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
while(1) {
std::cout << "\n+++++++ Waiting for new connection ++++++++\n\n";
int client_handle;
if ((client_handle = accept(server_handle, (struct sockaddr *)&address, (socklen_t *) &addrlen))<0)
{
perror("In accept");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
// read and respond to client request
char buffer[30000] = {0};
int bytesRead = read(client_handle, buffer, 30000);
char * httptype = "HTTP/1.1 ";
char * status = "200 \n";
char * contenttype = "Content-Type: text/html \n";
char * contentlength = "Content-Length: 21\n\n";
char * body = "<h1>hello world!</h1>";
write(client_handle, httptype, 9);
write(client_handle, status, 5);
write(client_handle, contenttype, 26);
write(client_handle, contentlength, 20);
write(client_handle, body, 21);
std::cout << "------------------Response sent-------------------\n";
close(client_handle);
}
}

Answer 1

If you want to send multiple buffers with a single write call you can use vectored IO (aka scatter/gather IO) as the manual suggests:
char *str0 = "hello ";
char *str1 = "world\n";
struct iovec iov[2];
ssize_t nwritten;
iov[0].iov_base = str0;
iov[0].iov_len = strlen(str0);
iov[1].iov_base = str1;
iov[1].iov_len = strlen(str1);
nwritten = writev(STDOUT_FILENO, iov, 2);

Answer 2

In fact it writing to a socket is not really different from writing to a file descriptor. And the fwrite function was introduced to the C library for a reason: write (be it to a TCP connection or to a file descriptor) involve a system call on common OS and a context change user/kernel. That context change has some overhead, mainly if you write small chunks of data.
On the other hand, if you write larger chunks of data in sizes that are close to the physical size for the underlying system call (disk buffer for a file descriptor, or max packet size for a network socket), the fwrite call or in your example the code concatenating char arrays will not really lower the system overhead and will just add some user code processing.
TL/DR: this depends on the average size of what you write. The smaller it is, the higher benefit of concatenating the date in larger chunks before writing. And remember: this is a low level optimization that should only be considered if you have identified a performance bottleneck or if the code could be used in a broadly distributed library.