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XCVI. Socket functions

Introduction

The socket extension implements a low-level interface to the socket communication functions based on the popular BSD sockets, providing the possibility to act as a socket server as well as a client.

For a more generic client-side socket interface, see fsockopen() and pfsockopen().

When using these functions, it is important to remember that while many of them have identical names to their C counterparts, they often have different declarations. Please be sure to read the descriptions to avoid confusion.

Those unfamiliar with socket programming can find a lot of useful material in the appropriate Unix man pages, and there is a great deal of tutorial information on socket programming in C on the web, much of which can be applied, with slight modifications, to socket programming in PHP. The UNIX Socket FAQ might be a good start.

Warning

This extension is EXPERIMENTAL. The behaviour of this extension -- including the names of its functions and anything else documented about this extension -- may change without notice in a future release of PHP. Use this extension at your own risk.

Requirements

No external libraries are needed to build this extension.

Installation

The socket functions described here are part of an extension to PHP which must be enabled at compile time by giving the --enable-sockets option to configure.

Runtime Configuration

This extension has no configuration directives defined in php.ini.

Resource Types

This extension has no resource types defined.

Predefined Constants

The constants below are defined by this extension, and will only be available when the extension has either been compiled into PHP or dynamically loaded at runtime.

AF_UNIX (integer)

AF_INET (integer)

SOCK_STREAM (integer)

SOCK_DGRAM (integer)

SOCK_RAW (integer)

SOCK_SEQPACKET (integer)

SOCK_RDM (integer)

MSG_OOB (integer)

MSG_WAITALL (integer)

MSG_PEEK (integer)

MSG_DONTROUTE (integer)

SO_DEBUG (integer)

SO_REUSEADDR (integer)

SO_KEEPALIVE (integer)

SO_DONTROUTE (integer)

SO_LINGER (integer)

SO_BROADCAST (integer)

SO_OOBINLINE (integer)

SO_SNDBUF (integer)

SO_RCVBUF (integer)

SO_SNDLOWAT (integer)

SO_RCVLOWAT (integer)

SO_SNDTIMEO (integer)

SO_RCVTIMEO (integer)

SO_TYPE (integer)

SO_ERROR (integer)

SOL_SOCKET (integer)

PHP_NORMAL_READ (integer)

PHP_BINARY_READ (integer)

SOL_TCP (integer)

SOL_UDP (integer)

Socket Errors

The socket extension was written to provide a useable interface to the powerful BSD sockets. Care has been taken that the functions work equally well on Win32 and Unix implementations. Almost all of the sockets functions may fail under certain conditions and therefore emit an E_WARNING message describing the error. Sometimes this doesn't happen to the desire of the developer. For example the function socket_read() may suddenly emit an E_WARNING message because the connection broke unexpectedly. It's common to suppress the warning with the @-operator and catch the error code within the application with the socket_last_error() function. You may call the socket_strerror() function with this error code to retrieve a string describing the error. See their description for more information.

Note: The E_WARNING messages generated by the socket extension are in english though the retrieved error message will appear depending on the current locale (LC_MESSAGES): 
Warning - socket_bind() unable to bind address [98]: Die Adresse wird bereits verwendet

Examples

Example 1. Socket example: Simple TCP/IP server

This example shows a simple talkback server. Change the address and port variables to suit your setup and execute. You may then connect to the server with a command similar to: telnet 192.168.1.53 10000 (where the address and port match your setup). Anything you type will then be output on the server side, and echoed back to you. To disconnect, enter 'quit'. 

#!/usr/local/bin/php -q
<?php
error_reporting (E_ALL);

/* Allow the script to hang around waiting for connections. */
set_time_limit (0);

/* Turn on implicit output flushing so we see what we're getting
 * as it comes in. */
ob_implicit_flush ();

$address = '192.168.1.53';
$port = 10000;

if (($sock = socket_create (AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0)) < 0) {
    echo "socket_create() failed: reason: " . socket_strerror ($sock) . "\n";
}

if (($ret = socket_bind ($sock, $address, $port)) < 0) {
    echo "socket_bind() failed: reason: " . socket_strerror ($ret) . "\n";
}

if (($ret = socket_listen ($sock, 5)) < 0) {
    echo "socket_listen() failed: reason: " . socket_strerror ($ret) . "\n";
}

do {
    if (($msgsock = socket_accept($sock)) < 0) {
        echo "socket_accept() failed: reason: " . socket_strerror ($msgsock) . "\n";
        break;
    }
    /* Send instructions. */
    $msg = "\nWelcome to the PHP Test Server. \n" .
        "To quit, type 'quit'. To shut down the server type 'shutdown'.\n";
    socket_write($msgsock, $msg, strlen($msg));

    do {
        if (FALSE === ($buf = socket_read ($msgsock, 2048))) {
            echo "socket_read() failed: reason: " . socket_strerror ($ret) . "\n";
            break 2;
        }
        if (!$buf = trim ($buf)) {
            continue;
        }
        if ($buf == 'quit') {
            break;
        }
        if ($buf == 'shutdown') {
            socket_close ($msgsock);
            break 2;
        }
        $talkback = "PHP: You said '$buf'.\n";
        socket_write ($msgsock, $talkback, strlen ($talkback));
        echo "$buf\n";
    } while (true);
    socket_close ($msgsock);
} while (true);

socket_close ($sock);
?>

Example 2. Socket example: Simple TCP/IP client

This example shows a simple, one-shot HTTP client. It simply connects to a page, submits a HEAD request, echoes the reply, and exits. 

<?php
error_reporting (E_ALL);

echo "<h2>TCP/IP Connection</h2>\n";

/* Get the port for the WWW service. */
$service_port = getservbyname ('www', 'tcp');

/* Get the IP address for the target host. */
$address = gethostbyname ('www.example.com');

/* Create a TCP/IP socket. */
$socket = socket_create (AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
if ($socket < 0) {
    echo "socket_create() failed: reason: " . socket_strerror ($socket) . "\n";
} else {
    echo "OK.\n";
}

echo "Attempting to connect to '$address' on port '$service_port'...";
$result = socket_connect ($socket, $address, $service_port);
if ($result < 0) {
    echo "socket_connect() failed.\nReason: ($result) " . socket_strerror($result) . "\n";
} else {
    echo "OK.\n";
}

$in = "HEAD / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n";
$out = '';

echo "Sending HTTP HEAD request...";
socket_write ($socket, $in, strlen ($in));
echo "OK.\n";

echo "Reading response:\n\n";
while ($out = socket_read ($socket, 2048)) {
    echo $out;
}

echo "Closing socket...";
socket_close ($socket);
echo "OK.\n\n";
?>

Table of Contents
socket_accept -- Accepts a connection on a socket
socket_bind -- Binds a name to a socket
socket_clear_error -- Clears the error on the socket or the last error code
socket_close -- Closes a socket resource
socket_connect -- Initiates a connection on a socket
socket_create_listen -- Opens a socket on port to accept connections
socket_create_pair -- Creates a pair of indistinguishable sockets and stores them in fds.
socket_create -- Create a socket (endpoint for communication)
socket_get_option -- Gets socket options for the socket
socket_getpeername --  Queries the remote side of the given socket which may either result in host/port or in a UNIX filesystem path, dependent on its type.
socket_getsockname --  Queries the local side of the given socket which may either result in host/port or in a UNIX filesystem path, dependent on its type.
socket_iovec_add -- Adds a new vector to the scatter/gather array
socket_iovec_alloc -- ...]) Builds a 'struct iovec' for use with sendmsg, recvmsg, writev, and readv
socket_iovec_delete -- Deletes a vector from an array of vectors
socket_iovec_fetch -- Returns the data held in the iovec specified by iovec_id[iovec_position]
socket_iovec_free -- Frees the iovec specified by iovec_id
socket_iovec_set -- Sets the data held in iovec_id[iovec_position] to new_val
socket_last_error -- Returns the last error on the socket
socket_listen -- Listens for a connection on a socket
socket_read -- Reads a maximum of length bytes from a socket
socket_readv -- Reads from an fd, using the scatter-gather array defined by iovec_id
socket_recv -- Receives data from a connected socket
socket_recvfrom -- Receives data from a socket, connected or not
socket_recvmsg -- Used to receive messages on a socket, whether connection-oriented or not
socket_select -- Runs the select() system call on the given arrays of sockets with a timeout specified by tv_sec and tv_usec
socket_send -- Sends data to a connected socket
socket_sendmsg -- Sends a message to a socket, regardless of whether it is connection-oriented or not
socket_sendto -- Sends a message to a socket, whether it is connected or not
socket_set_nonblock -- Sets nonblocking mode for file descriptor fd
socket_set_option -- Sets socket options for the socket
socket_shutdown -- Shuts down a socket for receiving, sending, or both.
socket_strerror -- Return a string describing a socket error
socket_write -- Write to a socket
socket_writev -- Writes to a file descriptor, fd, using the scatter-gather array defined by iovec_id
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