How to interrupt accept() in a TCP/IP server? - c++

Question

I'm working on a vision-application, which have two modes:
1) parameter setting
2) automatic
The problem is in 2), when my app waits for a signal via TCP/IP. The program is freezing while accept()-methode is called. I want to provide the possibility on a GUI to change the mode. So if the mode is changing, it's provided by another signal (message_queue). So I want to interrupt the accept state.
Is there a simple possibility to interrupt the accept?
std::cout << "TCPIP " << std::endl;
client = accept(slisten, (struct sockaddr*)&clientinfo, &clientinfolen);
if (client != SOCKET_ERROR)
cout << "client accepted: " << inet_ntoa(clientinfo.sin_addr) << ":"
<< ntohs(clientinfo.sin_port) << endl;
//receive the message from client
//recv returns the number of bytes received!!
//buf contains the data received
int rec = recv(client, buf, sizeof(buf), 0);
cout << "Message: " << rec << " bytes and the message " << buf << endl;
I read about select() but I have no clue how to use it. Could anybody give me a hint how to implement for example select() in my code?
Thanks.
Best regards,
T

Answer 1

The solution is to call accept() only when there is an incoming connection request. You do that by polling on the listen socket, where you can also add other file descriptors, use a timeout etc.
You did not mention your platform. On Linux, see epoll(), UNIX see poll()/select(), Windows I don't know.

Answer 2

A general way would be to use a local TCP connection by which the UI thread could interrupt the select call. The general architecture would use:
a dedicated thread waiting with select on both slisten and the local TCP connection
a TCP connection (Unix domain socket on a Unix or Unix-like system, or 127.0.0.1 on Windows) between the UI thread and the waiting one
various synchronizations/messages between both threads as required
Just declare that select should read slisten and the local socket. It will return as soon as one is ready, and you will be able to know which one is ready.

Answer 3

As you haven't specified your platform, and networking, especially async, is platform-specific, I suppose you need a cross-platform solution. Boost.Asio fits perfectly here: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_39_0/doc/html/boost_asio/reference/basic_socket_acceptor/async_accept/overload1.html
Example from the link:
void accept_handler(const boost::system::error_code& error)
{
if (!error)
{
// Accept succeeded.
}
}
...
boost::asio::ip::tcp::acceptor acceptor(io_service);
...
boost::asio::ip::tcp::socket socket(io_service);
acceptor.async_accept(socket, accept_handler);
If Boost is a problem, Asio can be a header-only lib and used w/o Boost: http://think-async.com/Asio/AsioAndBoostAsio.

Answer 4

One way would be to run select in a loop with a timeout.
Put slisten into nonblocking mode (this isn't strictly necessary but sometimes accept blocks even when select says otherwise) and then:
fd_set read_fds;
FD_ZERO(&read_fds);
FD_SET(slisten, &read_fds);
struct timeval timeout;
timeout.tv_sec = 1; // 1s timeout
timeout.tv_usec = 0;
int select_status;
while (true) {
select_status = select(slisten+1, &read_fds, NULL, NULL, &timeout);
if (select_status == -1) {
// ERROR: do something
} else if (select_status > 0) {
break; // we have data, we can accept now
}
// otherwise (i.e. select_status==0) timeout, continue
}
client = accept(slisten, ...);
This will allow you to catch signals once per second. More info here:
http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/select.2.html
and Windows version (pretty much the same):
https://msdn.microsoft.com/pl-pl/library/windows/desktop/ms740141(v=vs.85).aspx