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libwww-perl-5b5
River stage four • 2163 direct dependents • 6200 total dependents
167 ++
/ LWP::Socket

NAME

LWP::Socket - TCP/IP socket interface

SYNOPSIS

 $socket = new LWP::Socket;
 $socket->connect('localhost', 7); # echo
 $quote = 'I dunno, I dream in Perl sometimes...';
 $socket->write("$quote\n");
 $socket->readUntil("\n", \$buffer);
 $socket->read(\$buffer);
 $socket = undef;  # close

DESCRIPTION

This class implements TCP/IP sockets. It groups socket generation, TCP address manipulation and buffered reading.

This class should really not be required, something like this should be part of the standard Perl5 library.

Running this module standalone executes a self test which requires localhost to serve chargen and echo protocols.

METHODS

new()

Constructs a socket object.

connect($host, $port)

Connect the socket to given host and port.

shutdown()

Shuts down the connection.

bind($host, $port)

Binds a name to the socket.

listen($queuesize)

Set up listen queue for socket.

accept($timeout)

Accepts a new connection. Returns a new LWP::Socket object if successful. Timeout not implemented yet.

getsockname()

Returns a 2 element array ($host, $port)

readUntil($delim, $data_ref, $size, $timeout)

Reads data from the socket, up to a delimiter specified by a regular expression. If $delim is undefined all data is read. If $size is defined, data will be read internally in chunks of $size bytes. This does not mean that we will return the data when size bytes are read.

Note that $delim is discarded from the data returned.

read($bufref, [$size, $timeout])

Reads data of the socket. Not more than $size bytes. Might return less if the data is available. Dies on timeout.

pushback($data)

Put data back into the socket. Data will returned next time you read(). Can be used if you find out that you have read too much.

write($data, [$timeout])

Write data to socket. The $data argument might be a scalar or code.

If data is a reference to a subroutine, then we will call this routine to obtain the data to be written. The routine will be called until it returns undef or empty data. Data might be returned from the callback as a scalar or as a reference to a scalar.

Write returns the number of bytes written to the socket.

_getaddress($h, $p)

Given a host and a port, it will return the address (sockaddr_in) suitable as the name argument for connect() or bind(). Might return several addresses in array context if the hostname is bound to several IP addresses.

SELF TEST

This self test is only executed when this file is run standalone. It tests its functions against some standard TCP services implemented by inetd. If you do not have them around the tests will fail.