Hands-On Network Programming with C: Learn socket programming in C and write secure and optimized network code Kindle Edition

This book had exactly the info I needed to add networking capabilities to my program. I thought the book progressed in a very easy to follow way, and I think it does a good job of balancing theory with practice.I also really like all of the example programs. They're all on Github, and they're just complete enough to be very practical, but not so big as to have any extra fluff. Most books either have examples that are too "toy" to be useful, or that include a bunch of extra functions irrelevant to the subject matter. This book strikes the perfect balance!If you told me last year that I'd be able to program a complete and functional HTTPS server in C after reading only one book on the subject, I'd think you were crazy. But here it is!PS despite the other reviews, I didn't notice any errors in the book or with the example programs.

This is probably the most rewarding book I have read related to programming. I also read TCP/IP sockets in C. That book was very good. This book is 10 times better than that book. It really is that good. The knowledge is totally empowering. All the programming examples work great and are a good study in c programming in itself not to mention network programming. You have to read it to see what I'm talking about here. It's too hard to describe why this book is so good. If you want to be able to network your programs or create clients and servers and understand network security this is your book. I would recommend reading a book on C programming first, not that the examples are all that complicated, but just to be sure you are not missing all the great knowledge here. I read, C programming A modern approach to get familiar with C programming, personally.

Author does a great job using relevant use cases with modern technology. Even if you don't use the code the theory is presented well. I'm a C geek and it's especially nice to see how easy it is to do complex tasks using 3rd party libraries in C.

I've been writing TCP programs for a really long time now, almost daily, and found this book really impressive, from a pratical point of view.I don't understand the bad reviews, even if there are some mistakes (which I don't remember if there are), on the whole this is a very useful book for writing TCP programs, even going to some topics that are not so common, like using the OpenSSL library.Highly recommended.Disclaimer: it's been some time since I've read this book, but I'm writing this review to counterbalance the bad ones I've seen now, that I think are undeserved).

I started and progressed through the first couple of chapters. I would normally not give this book one star, as the authors knowledge is limited in the field of socket programming. Example: The very first program should find the connected network devices. Devices live on the OSI Model Level 2. The program indicates that we are looking for IPv4 or IPv6 which live on the OSI model Layer 3. As a result leaving the novice reader wondering why the program is not responding as expected. So after a short debugging I found the return value, and found it was a layer 2 responses vs the Networking layer (layer 3) that’s when it dawned on me, the networking device lives on the device layer , and after one Google search I was able to confirm the obvious. This tells me one thing for certain, the author does not know the subject matter as well as the book attempts to lead on. It wouldn’t be so tragic if it were a small mistake like a missing pointer or an int versus a long, the compiler catches that but looking at an entirely different part of the computer? Update: As a dev I know bugs sometimes make it through to production. As I continued reading there is extremely valuable information and guidance...

If I could describe this book in a word, it would be ambitious. Where most guides I've seen on this topic stick to POSIX implementations, this book goes fully cross platform, including even Windows. Other guides might focus on the nuances of constructing network sockets by hand and manually entering an IPv4 addresses into some struct, but this one chooses to immediately target IPv4 and IPv6. It spends an entire chapter on DNS, where other guides might handwave this away as something you'll figure out another time. With this in mind, I feel this book succeeds at being a good overview of web technologies, which will get you up and running and let you know what to look into more. Like a lot of other programming books, many chapters in this book follow a format of showing a single example program, spread into bite sized chunks of code with paragraphs of prose explaining what's going on. While I was a little disappointed by the lack of exercises (there are a few, but they aren't extensive), the examples are effective, easy to follow and clearly explained. I'm not much of a literary critic, and I can't speak to the quality of the writing itself in an articulate way, but I would describe the prose as serviceable. The author's voice isn't entirely consistent throughout, although it's hard for me to put my finger on why exactly I feel that way. You occasionally run across choppy or awkward sentence structures, which are never indecipherable but can be distracting, but feel like a tighter edit would have caught. I wouldn't say this got in the way of conveying ideas, and I didn't really find it an issue, just that it wasn't quite as seamless as some other texts.The decision to cover so many topics in such a broad way is both a positive and a negative. I was surprised by how flexible the POSIX and C libraries were, which this book does a much better job of establishing than certain other guides. However, in order to maintain cross-platform performance, almost every chapter begins with a header defining a series of macros, many of which simply map to system calls. While something of this nature may be fine on a medium scale project, I do think something is lost by using these macros when working through examples, even if the core concepts remain the same. I was going to say in this review that building cross platform doesn't feel necessary (if we can at least target POSIX-like, it'd be fine), except that several of my computers were physically stolen when I was halfway through the book, and it was indeed remarkably convenient to transfer all the code examples onto a windows box I borrowed and have them all run without modification.Due to the sheer volume being covered, you will need to spend some time in the man pages to really get what's being covered. While it's not too egregious, there are occasions where functions are used which will not be introduced for several more chapters. Additionally, I enjoy getting clearly formatted charts showing the composition of data structures that are introduced (addr_in or others), which are sometimes present but not always. Again, these are basically all in the man pages so it's not too big a deal.Though I have been focusing negatives until now, you should keep in mind that this book will indeed get you a TCP client up and running by chapter 3, and a simple HTTP server by chapter 7. "Hands-On Network Programming in C" is a very apt title, although if I were naming it, I'd throw a "practical" in there somewhere. It has around the same level of depth as the first few chapters of K & R. It's not the be all and end all, but it'll get you running and let you know what you should look into more. What's more remarkable is that it gets you so far in such a short amount of text.Overall, I am satisfied with this book. It helped get me where I needed to be in terms of understanding this technology, although I did have to supplement portions of it with man pages and online materials (shoutouts to Beej), which should be expected from any introductory book to such a broad topic. If you want to learn to program sockets and write your own HTTP servers in C, this is not a bad way to start at all.

It's amazing how much detail, passion and knowledge has been put into this book!

Best book I've ever read on the subject of Network programming using C. It has an amazing and comprehensive up to date content for network development considering OS portability, IPV4/IPV6, Multiplexing, SSH, etc. All sample code are straightforward helping the reader to easily grasp the concepts.

Easy to understand

I just finished this book, and I learned a ton.Concepts are introduced in a logical order, and each chapter has complete working examples to illustrate exactly how everything goes together.All of the code works on multiple operating systems too, even though Windows and Linux have different APIs. This is all explained throughout the book.Near the end of the book, in chapter 13, several networking edge-cases and gotchas are discussed.So, solutions to a bunch of problems before you even know you have them! I'm sure these edge-cases will save me a lot of frustration in the future.This book is written by someone who has a complete grasp of C.The difference - and why you should buy this book - is the writer is also gifted with the ability to explain C Programming clearly and methodically.Many tech writers use a publishing platform as a way to showcase their knowledge which leads to information overload and reader confusion. Mr.VanWinkle writes without ego; a style other tech writers would do well to emulate. I look forward to reading more from this author.I highly recommend this for anyone interested in network programming with C orC++.

I like books where things are explained well, this is one of them. I would buy it again.