libIris - A simple and scalable networking library for Linux

LibIris is a C++ library whose goal is to provide a unified platform for networking applications development. The provided API provides methods for creating, connecting, and destroying network endpoints, as well as for receiving connection requests and for data exchange. LibIris uses the epoll mechanism to achieve scalable event multiplexing.

Building and installing libIris

To build libIris just type: make

To build a development version of libIris with support for debugging symbols type: make dev

To build only the tests type: make tests

To install the libIris library, run the following as root: make install

Removing libIris

To remove the libIris library type as root: make remove

Testing libIris

We have included several unit tests which check whether the libIris library works correctly. Check the tests folder for details.

Supported protocols

The library supports the TCP and UDP communication protocols. The default protocol is TCP however the user can change this by calling the method set_ptotocol() into an endpoint object. For example: :

server->set_protocol(Endpoint::UDP);

Additionally, both IPv4 and IPv6 are supported by libIris.

Using libIris

To use the libIris library you need to include #include <libiris/libiris.h to your C++ source file. Then, providing you have installed libiris into your system, you can build your application as follows:

$(CC) -o application_binary application.cc -liris

LibIris provides a general network endpoint class. This class is holds general information about a network endpoint including the communication protocol, the type i.e. client or server, the table of socket descriptors, the size of this table, as well as a pointer to an addrinfo structure. It is further categorized into a Client and a Server class.

The Client class defines the client endpoint object. A client side application can use this object to exchange data with a server. For example:

Client *client = new Client;
int status = client->attach(server_ip, port);
if (!status) {
  ...
  client->detach();
}
delete client;

A server side application can use this object to communicate with a client. For example:

Client *client = new client;
int status = server->get_client(client);
if (status) {
  ...
  client->detach();
}
delete client;

The Server class defines the server endpoint object. A server side application can use this object to wait for clients and exchange data with them. For example:

Server *server = new server;
status = server->start(NULL, 8000, 10);
if (!status) {
  while(run) {
    Client *client = new Client;
    status = server->get_client(client);
    if (!status) {
      server->receive_data(buf, buf_len, client); 
      status = client->detach();
    }
    delete client;
 }
 server->stop();

Development and Contributing

The initial developer of libIris is Giorgos Kappes. Feel free to contribute to the development of libIris by cloning the repository: git clone https://github.com/geokapp/libiris. You can also send feedback, new feature requests, and bug reports to geokapp@gmail.com.