UDP : How to send a response to a client

[sayem.bd]

Hi

I want to write a UDP server which will listen for requests coming from various UDP clients. After receiving a request it will send a response to that client. How can I do that in Qt?

I am binding a QUdpSocket instance to a specific port to listen for client requests. As a resut when a request arrives the readyread signal is emitted. I can then read the request in the corresponding slot method. But now to send a response I need to know client's address and port. How can I get that?

[koahnig]

AFAIK it would be better to make the request through TCP/IP since you know it will be received.
UDP is more a one transmission without checking of reception on the other end ("see also":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Datagram_Protocol#Comparison_of_UDP_and_TCP ).

[andre]

UDP has its uses, and without knowing the use case one cannot advise to use TCP instead of UDP.

The point of UDP is that you basically just send of a bit of information to another IP at a certain port, and that's it. There is no connection, so also no back channel. If you want to reply, your client will also need to be listening on a certain port, and your server can send the UDP response back to that port. You could choose a fixed port to listen on, or you could make the client send a port number it will be listening on in one of the messages to the server.

[sayem.bd]

[quote author="koahnig" date="1325241071"]AFAIK it would be better to make the request through TCP/IP since you know it will be received.
UDP is more a one transmission without checking of reception on the other end ("see also":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Datagram_Protocol#Comparison_of_UDP_and_TCP ). [/quote]

The client doesn't know that the request will be received for sure. Similarly, the server also doesn't know that a client request will arrive. But even if a single client request arrives at server, then the server must send a response back to the client. This is why I want to know if there is any way to get the client address and port.

[koahnig]

[quote author="sayem.bd" date="1325241455"]
The client doesn't know that the request will be received for sure. Similarly, the server also doesn't know that a client request will arrive. But even if a single client request arrives at server, then the server must send a response back to the client. This is why I want to know if there is any way to get the client address and port.[/quote]

Well, there are apparently these "access methods":http://developer.qt.nokia.com/doc/qt-4.8/qabstractsocket.html#peerAddress (also for local address and ports) available.

@Andre I wonder if it is a good strategy to use UDP instead of TCP/IP for forward and backward communication. At the day's end you might have to establish certain checks simulating what is already part of TCP/IP.

[andre]

True enough, it may be better to use TCP, but without more information on the use case, that is not possible to decide.

[sayem.bd]

Thanks Andre, your answer explained a lot of things.

[koahnig]

[quote author="Andre" date="1325242094"]True enough, it may be better to use TCP, but without more information on the use case, that is not possible to decide.[/quote]

You are right there might be justifications for UDP in certain use cases.

[goetz]

"QUdpSocket::readDatagram() ":/doc/qt-4.8/qudpsocket.html#readDatagram takes optional pointers to a [[Doc:QHostAddress]] for the address and a quint for the port.

bq. Receives a datagram no larger than maxSize bytes and stores it in data. The sender's host address and port is stored in *address and *port (unless the pointers are 0).

Use it to send your data back to the sender.

In Qt, using [[Doc:QUdpSocket]] you can sort of connect between the server and the client and use [[Doc:QIODevice]]'s read() and write() methods. This is not a real connection like in using TCP, but kind of a "virtual connection".