TCP Server timeout

[tweetiepooh]

I'm trying to write a simple TCP server that will wait for a poll message and respond, or a data message and process. This all looks fine, what I now need to add is a timeout so if no poll is received in 3 minutes to do something.

Is there a nice simple way to do this? Help with knowing what to look for will probably surfice.

I'm using IO::Socket::INET on Solaris. I don't need much in the way of error handling or handshaking. It really is very simple.

Thanks in advance.

[jethro]

There is a timeout parameter you can pass to IO::Socket::INETs constructor (at least in the current version).

And there is IO::Socket::INET::Daemon, a simple tcp daemon, also with a timeout parameter. ...Daemon seems to be dependent only on IO::Socket::INET and IO::Select.

And you might use IO::Select directly to add a timeout to your server code.

[leighsharpe]

The 'timeout' option to IO::Socket will do what you want:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use IO::Socket;
my $server=IO::Socket->new(
                Domain=>AF_INET,
                Proto=>'tcp',
                LocalPort=>'1234',
                Listen=>SOMAXCONN,
                );
$server->timeout(10);
my $connection=$server->accept;
if ($connection) {
    print "Got a message.\n";
    close $connection;
} else {
    print "Timed out.\n";
}

[Khen1950fx]

As I understand it, timeout would apply to the connection handshake, not waiting for a poll or data message. Also, I checked the source for IO::Socket::INET, and the timeout function is commented out. You could still try adding a timeout to the constructor, but I don't know if that would work or not. I'd go with jethro's advice and use IO::Socket::INET::Daemon. It's the simplest way that I know of.