WSAConnect  5ZKPNX 

The Windows Sockets WSAConnect function establishes a connection to a peer, exchanges connect data, and specifies needed quality of service based on the supplied flow specification.

int  WSAConnect (

Parameters

s

[in] A descriptor identifying an unconnected socket.

name

[in] The name of the peer to which the socket is to be connected.

namelen

[in] The length of the name.

lpCallerData

[in] A pointer to the user data that is to be transferred to the peer during connection establishment.

lpCalleeData

[out] A pointer to the user data that is to be transferred back from the peer during connection establishment.

lpSQOS

[in] A pointer to the flow specifications for socket s, one for each direction.

lpGQOS

[in] A pointer to the flow specifications for the socket group (if applicable).

Remarks

This function is used to create a connection to the specified destination, and to perform a number of other ancillary operations that occur at connect time as well. If the socket, s, is unbound, unique values are assigned to the local association by the system, and the socket is marked as bound.

For connection-oriented sockets (for example, type SOCK_STREAM), an active connection is initiated to the foreign host using name (an address in the name space of the socket; for a detailed description, please see bind). When this call completes successfully, the socket is ready to send/receive data. If the address field of the name structure is all zeroes, WSAConnect will return the error WSAEADDRNOTAVAIL. Any attempt to reconnect an active connection will fail with the error code WSAEISCONN.

For a connectionless socket (for example, type SOCK_DGRAM), the operation erformed by WSAConnect is merely to establish a default destination address so that the socket may be used on subsequent connection-oriented send and receive operations (send, WSASend, recv, WSARecv). Any datagrams received from an address other than the destination address specified will be discarded. If the address field of the name structure is all zeroes, the socket will be "dis-connected." Then, the default remote address will be indeterminate, so send/WSASend and recv/WSARecv calls will return the error code WSAENOTCONN. However, sendto/WSASendTo and recvfrom/WSARecvFrom can still be used. The default destination may be changed by simply calling WSAConnect again, even if the socket is already "connected". Any datagrams queued for receipt are discarded if name is different from the previous WSAConnect.

For connectionless sockets, name may indicate any valid address, including a broadcast address. However, to connect to a broadcast address, a socket must have setsockopt SO_BROADCAST enabled. Otherwise, WSAConnect will fail with the error code WSAEACCES.

On connectionless sockets, exchange of user to user data is not possible and the corresponding parameters will be silently ignored.

The application is responsible for allocating any memory space pointed to directly or indirectly by any of the parameters it specifies.

The lpCallerData is a value parameter which contains any user data that is to be sent along with the connection request. If lpCallerData is NULL, no user data will be passed to the peer. The lpCalleeData is a result parameter which will contain any user data passed back from the peer as part of the connection establishment. lpCalleeData->len initially contains the length of the buffer allocated by the application and pointed to by lpCalleeData->buf. lpCalleeData->len will be set to zero if no user data has been passed back. The lpCalleeData information will be valid when the connection operation is complete. For blocking sockets, this will be when the WSAConnect function returns. For nonblocking sockets, this will be after the FD_CONNECT notification has occurred. If lpCalleeData is NULL, no user data will be passed back. The exact format of the user data is specific to the address family to which the socket belongs.

At connect time, an application may use the lpSQOS and/or lpGQOS parameters to override any previous QOS specification made for the socket through WSAIoctl with either the SIO_SET_QOS or SIO_SET_GROUP_QOS opcodes.

lpSQOS specifies the flow specifications for socket s, one for each direction, followed by any additional provider-specific parameters. If either the associated transport provider in general or the specific type of socket in particular cannot honor the QOS request, an error will be returned as indicated below. The sending or receiving flow specification values will be ignored, respectively, for any unidirectional sockets. If no provider-specific parameters are supplied, the buf and len fields of lpSQOS->ProviderSpecific should be set to NULL and zero, respectively. A NULL value for lpSQOS indicates no application supplied QOS.

lpGQOS specifies the flow specifications for the socket group (if applicable), one for each direction, followed by any additional provider-specific parameters. If no provider-specific parameters are supplied, the buf and len fields of lpSQOS->ProviderSpecific should be set to NULL and zero, respectively. A NULL value for lpGQOS indicates no application-supplied group QOS. This parameter will be ignored if s is not the creator of the socket group.

Comments

When connected sockets break (that is, become closed for whatever reason), they should be discarded and recreated. It is safest to assume that when things go awry for any reason on a connected socket, the application must discard and recreate the needed sockets in order to return to a stable point.

Return Values

If no error occurs, WSAConnect returns zero. Otherwise, it returns SOCKET_ERROR, and a specific error code may be retrieved by calling WSAGetLastError. On a blocking socket, the return value indicates success or failure of the connection attempt.

With a nonblocking socket, the connection attempt may not be completed immediately. In this case, WSAConnect will return SOCKET_ERROR, and WSAGetLastError will return WSAEWOULDBLOCK. In this case, the application may:

  1.  Use select to determine the completion of the connection request by checking if the socket is writeable, or

  2.  If your application is using WSAAsyncSelect to indicate interest in connection events, then your application will receive an FD_CONNECT notification when the connect operation is complete, or

  3.  If your application is using WSAEventSelect to indicate interest in connection events, then the associated event object will be signaled when the connect operation is complete.

For a nonblocking socket, until the connection attempt completes all subsequent calls to WSAConnect on the same socket will fail with the error code WSAEALREADY.

If the return error code indicates the connection attempt failed (that is, WSAECONNREFUSED, WSAENETUNREACH, WSAETIMEDOUT) the application may call WSAConnect again for the same socket.

Error Codes

See Also