L4: Learning C, Servers, Low level socket programming
Knocking off the languages one by one. Only significant one left is Java, I think. And Perl I guess.
I’m learning from the venerable K&H second edition, so…guess I’m on the right track. I’ll just put some notes here:
- C needs the path to be able to run its program. a.out doesn’t work but ./a.out does
- You have to declare variables, pfft
- Actually takes a long time to compile.
- C data types: int, float, char, short (shortint), long (longint), double (double precision float)
- Types of output replacements: %d print decimal integer, %6d pring decimal integer at least 6 char wide, %f print floating point, %.2f for floating pt 2 chars after decimal point, %6.2f print floating point 6 chars 2 after decimal point, %o for octal, %x for hexadecimal, %c for character,%s for string
- Symbolic constants are basically variables and I think they’re retarded.
- Function declaration requires output and input type
The rest of the book was a quick skim.
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How does a server actually work?
I know it receives requests from clients and does the corresponding action (serve files, change files). How does it do this?
Here are the things I have to learn:
- HTTP Protocol
- TCP server - BSD socket programming
I’m going to write a server in Python.
Here are useful links:
http://www.kellbot.com/2010/02/tutorial-writing-a-tcp-server-in-python/
http://fragments.turtlemeat.com/pythonwebserver.php
http://docs.python.org/library/socket.html
Turns out python makes it ridiculously easy using built in modules. For one, the socket module handles everything socket related. There’s also a module called BaseHTTPServer…you can guess what that does.
Anyway, I wrote four different client/server models and I think I’m pretty satisfied with my knowledge of socket programming and server/client interactions. I need to read into IPv4 and IPv6, the HTTP protocol, and the source code on some of the python socket operations to have a better understanding though…I also want to set up a server box running Apache, and read the Apache source code to see how a real production server works. I just need a cheap machine to do it on…do I? I could just use a virtual machine right? Amazon?
