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How to set a socket connection timeout

4.92/5 (24 votes)
16 Mar 2011CPOL 165.4K  
Resolve long timeout when connection target is unavailable
Sometimes, the connect time-out can take too much time when the target is unavailable. To resolve this issue, we can use non-blocking socket mode to select the timeout.

bool connect(char *host,int port, int timeout)
{
    TIMEVAL Timeout;
    Timeout.tv_sec = timeout;
    Timeout.tv_usec = 0;
    struct sockaddr_in address;  /* the libc network address data structure */   

    sock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP);

    address.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr(host); /* assign the address */
    address.sin_port = htons(port);            /* translate int2port num */	
    address.sin_family = AF_INET;

    //set the socket in non-blocking
    unsigned long iMode = 1;
    int iResult = ioctlsocket(sock, FIONBIO, &iMode);
    if (iResult != NO_ERROR)
    {	
        printf("ioctlsocket failed with error: %ld\n", iResult);
    }
	    
    if(connect(sock,(struct sockaddr *)&address,sizeof(address))==false)
    {	
        return false;
    }	

    // restart the socket mode
    iMode = 0;
    iResult = ioctlsocket(sock, FIONBIO, &iMode);
    if (iResult != NO_ERROR)
    {	
        printf("ioctlsocket failed with error: %ld\n", iResult);
    }

    fd_set Write, Err;
    FD_ZERO(&Write);
    FD_ZERO(&Err);
    FD_SET(sock, &Write);
    FD_SET(sock, &Err);

    // check if the socket is ready
    select(0,NULL,&Write,&Err,&Timeout);			
    if(FD_ISSET(sock, &Write)) 
    {	
        return true;
    }

    return false;
}

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)