network-go

README

Network module for Go (UDP broadcast only)

See main.go for usage example. The code is runnable with just go run main.go

About this fork

This fork replaces all local imports with package imports from github so that the packages can be imported from other projects. Example import:

import (
	"github.com/sigtot/Network-go/network/bcast"
	"github.com/sigtot/Network-go/network/localip"
)

The packages can then be installed with for example go get github.com/sigtot/Network-go/network/bcast. dep should also fetch these automatically and painlessly.

A small note

The package connection was originally named conn but was renamed due to a colliding variable name in the implementation, and to avoid stealing good names from the user. From blog.golang.org/package-names:

Avoid giving a package a name that is commonly used in client code. For example, the buffered I/O package is called bufio, not buf, since buf is a good variable name for a buffer.

Features

Channel-in/channel-out pairs of (almost) any custom or built-in datatype can be supplied to a pair of transmitter/receiver functions. Data sent to the transmitter function is automatically serialized and broadcasted on the specified port. Any messages received on the receiver's port are deserialized (as long as they match any of the receiver's supplied channel datatypes) and sent on the corresponding channel. See bcast.Transmitter and bcast.Receiver.

Peers on the local network can be detected by supplying your own ID to a transmitter and receiving peer updates (new, current and lost peers) from the receiver. See peers.Transmitter and peers.Receiver.

Finding your own local IP address can be done with the LocalIP convenience function, but only when you are connected to the internet.

For Windows users

In order to use this module on Windows, you must install a C compiler. I recommend TDM-GCC, which is a redistribution of GCC and MinGW.

You may need to add the C toolchain binaries to your Environment Path manually. If you can run gcc from either cmd or Powershell, it is already working. If not, open the environment variables dialog the long way, or the short way with Win+R and typing rundll32 sysdm.cpl,EditEnvironmentVariables. Edit the PATH variable by adding ;C:\TDM-GCC-64\bin (or whatever your chosen install directory was) at the end of the semi-colon-delimited list. You may also need to restart or log off & back on in order for the changes to take effect.

The error return values on Windows just display numbers instead of descriptive text. See here for descriptions of the error codes

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If you are wondering why Windows is such a hassle, read the comments in network/conn/bcast_conn_windows.go