Question

I have a Client-Server Perl program. I want to send a message stored in an array to the server.

Server code:

use IO::Socket::INET;

# Creating a a new socket
$socket=new IO::Socket::INET->new(LocalPort=>5000,Proto=>'udp');

print "\nUDPServer Waiting for client on port 5000";

while(1)
{
    $socket->recv($recieved_data,1024);
    $peer_address = $socket->peerhost();
    $peer_port = $socket->peerport();
    print "\n($peer_address , $peer_port) said : $recieved_data";
}

Client code::

use IO::Socket::INET;

# Create a new socket
$socket=new IO::Socket::INET->new(PeerAddr=>'127.0.0.1',PeerPort=>5000,Proto=>'udp');

@message_array = ("message", 120, "sample");
$socket->send(@message_array);

In server side I changed like,

$socket->recv(@recieved_data,1024);

But I am getting an error like this,

UDPServer Waiting for client on port 5000usage: $sock->recv(BUF, LEN [, FLAGS]) at udp_server.pl line 17

How to send an array and getting it printed or displayed in the server side.?

Answer 1

You have to serialize the data. You send the serialized chunk of data over the wire then unserialize it.

There are many options for this. The Indonesian Perl mongers recently made a comparison of serialization modules

Perl comes with Storable, which can work just fine although you have to be careful that the module hasn’t changed in some way so that one version’s serialization works with another version.

There are data formats such as YAML or JSON that might be better since they don’t depend on module versions. Both can handle complex data structures, although YAML can deal with Perl objects and JSON can’t (although JSYNC can). Each option has different trade-offs.