Cross platform Networking API [closed]

Answer 1

The NRL has a really great library of networking methods that supports a large variety of platforms. They have excellent support from the actual developers on their mailing lists as well.

Protolib

Answer 2

Synapse is good multiplatform network library. Open source and very easy to use.

http://www.ararat.cz/synapse/doku.php/download

Answer 3

most of the berkeley sockets api works everywhere.

Answer 4

For this simple application you can use the standard "Berkeley socket" functions that are mostly portable. You can also use Boost's abstractions.

If you needed security functions like SSL/TLS (which you don't need for a simple game I guess), there are open source libraries like OpenSSL, GNU TLS, Mozilla NSS.

Answer 5

SDL Net is a very simple abstraction layer on top of sockets, that's very easy to use. See http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_net.

Answer 6

There are a few options for this, some easier to use than others:

• APR (Apache Portable Runtime) - Very popular. Quite easy to use. Includes lots of additional features handy for network programming (threads, mutexes, etc.)

• ACE - Popular among the embedded space. Personally, I found it quite a complicated API, and not very straightforward to use.

• Boost - If you have a decent level of sophistication with C++ (templates, metaprogramming, etc.), then Boost libraries are generally very good. I'm not sure how popular the Boost asynchronous networking libraries are in the real world.

• QT - Popular as a UI toolkit, but has a great set of threading, event management, networking libraries. IMO, this is by far the easiest to use.

It's important to stay away from using the berkeley sockets library, as the implementations across operating systems vary wildly, and you'll lose a fair bit of time to tuning them as you port your software across OSs.

My personal preference: APR.