PHP - Redirect Connection With Sockets???

Hi,

I'm building a flash environment for a small scale MMO game, and I need to employ the use of sockets so that users can interact with each other in real time (chat, battle, exploring, etc).  I've done quite a bit of Googling, and haven't turned up much useful information.  Maybe I'm looking for the wrong thing?

Anyway, I have my own server, running Fedora 9 and Apache 2.0.  I want to create a PHP "socket server" that runs almost as a process on my server, so that users can connect to it and pass data between each other instantly.  I've looked through PHP's manual on the socket functions, and I'm fairly confident that I will be able to work with them just fine as soon as I actually have the socket server working..

So my question is, how exactly would I go about starting this process?  I'm messing around on the command line right now and can't seem to get it to work?

Thanks,

nethnet

Ahoy Sailor!

So I've just started making a Server Client based application in PHP, First time I've dabble in PHP for about a year so forgive me if I'm slightly rusty. But I get the "Could not accept incoming connection" error when my client try's to connect to my server. How cometh?

<?php
$host = "127.0.0.1";
$port = 405;
set_time_limit(0);
// create socket
$socket = socket_create(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0) or die("Could not create socket\n");
$result = socket_bind($socket, $host, $port) or die("Could not bind to socket\n");
$result = socket_listen($socket, 3) or die("Could not set up socket listener\n");
// Networking area, Creating, Binding & finally listing

$spawn = socket_accept($socket) or die("Could not accept incoming connection\n");

$out = "0;text\n";
socket_write($spawn, $out, strlen ($out)) or die("Could not write output\n");

?>
^ Client<?php
$addr="127.0.0.1";
$port=405;
$timeout=0;
$socket = socket_create(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0) or die("Could not create socket\n");
$res = socket_connect($socket, $addr, $port);

$spawn = socket_accept($socket) or die("Could not accept incoming connection\n");
$dat= socket_read($spawn, 1024) or die("Could not read input\n");
echo $dat;
?>
Server^
_____________________

Anyone know?

See Ya!

i have been working to works. but any time i use the method socket_read(); or socket_write(); my apache server gives me an error  undefined method pls want could be responsible for this error. i am quite sure of the syntax

I recently came across http://forums.phpfre...g-with-sockets/.  Sockets?  Never heard of them...   I looked at the PHP documentation http://php.net/manua...tro.sockets.php, and it tells how to implement them, but not really what their purpose is.   I then search a bit, and learned about their history http://en.wikipedia....erkeley_sockets, but still not really why they are used.   Okay, sockets are used to connect an application to a given port and IP, and PHP can be set up as either a socket host or socket client?  Is this something like a SOAP server/client, but SOAP specifies a given port and protocol?  Do sockets not necessarily specify a protocol?   Still a little fuzzy.  Can anyone provide examples on where they might be used?
  BSD Sockets generally relies upon client/server architecture. For TCP communications, one host listens for incoming connection requests. When a request arrives, the server host will accept it, at which point data can be transferred between the hosts. UDP is also allowed to establish a connection, though it is not required. Data can simply be sent to or received from a host.   The Sockets API makes use of two mechanisms to deliver data to the application level: ports and sockets. Ports and sockets are one of the most misunderstood concepts in sockets programming.   All TCP/IP stacks have 65,536 ports for both TCP and UDP. There is a full compliment of ports for UDP (numbered 0-65535) and another full compliment, with the same numbering scheme, for TCP. The two sets do not overlap. Thus, communication over both TCP and UDP can take place on port 15 (for example) at the same time.   A port is not a physical interface - it is a concept that simplifies the concept of Internet communications for humans. Upon receiving a packet, the protocol stack directs it to the specific port. If there is no application listening on that port, the packet is discarded and an error may be returned to the sender. However, applications can create sockets, which allow them to attach to a port. Once an application has created a socket and bound it to a port, data destined to that port will be delivered to the application. This is why the term socket is used - it is the connection mechanism between the outside world (the ports) and the application. A common misunderstanding is that sockets-based systems can only communicate with other sockets-based systems. This is not true. TCP/IP or UDP/IP communications are handled at the port level - the underlying protocols do not care what mechanisms exist above the port. Any Internet host can communicate with any other, be it Berkeley Sockets, WinSock, or anything else. "Sockets" is just an API that allows the programmer to access Internet functionality - it does not modify the manner in which communications occur.   Reference: http://wiki.treck.co..._to_BSD_Sockets

I am trying to post a feed file to ebay from our site via a PHP script, but I am new to this stuff. I found some instructions he http://pics.ebaystatic.com/aw/pics/pdf/us/file_exchange/File_Exchange_Advanced_Instructions.pdf

The most important part of that PDF is:
Quote

Sample HTTP Post Request
POST /path/to/upload/script HTTP/1.0
Connection: Keep-Alive
User-Agent: My Client App v1.0
Host:
https://bulksell.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?FileExchangeUpload
Content-type: multipart/form-data;
boundary=THIS_STRING_SEPARATES
Content-Length: 256
--THIS_STRING_SEPARATES
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="token"
12345678987654321
--THIS_STRING_SEPARATES
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="file";
filename="listings.csv"
Content-Type: text/csv
... contents of listings.csv ...
--THIS_STRING_SEPARATES



I tried to implement it using this code:
<?php

// GET THE FEED FILE
$options = array(
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_HEADER         => false, 
    CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true, 
    CURLOPT_ENCODING       => "", 
    CURLOPT_USERAGENT      => "website", 
    CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER    => true,
    CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT => 120, 
    CURLOPT_TIMEOUT        => 120,
    CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS      => 10, 
    CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => false,
);

$ch = curl_init('https://www.mysite.com/pull_feed.php');
curl_setopt_array( $ch, $options );
$contents = curl_exec( $ch );
curl_close( $ch );


//----------------------------------------------------//


//OPEN THE CONNECTION
$conn = fsockopen('https://bulksell.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?FileExchangeProgrammaticDownload', 80);

// START THE REQUEST
fputs($conn, "POST ".$_SERVER['PATH_INFO']." HTTP/1.0");
fputs($conn, "Connection: Keep-Alive");
fputs($conn, "User-Agent: My Client App v1.0");
fputs($conn, "Host:");
fputs($conn, "https://bulksell.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?FileExchangeUpload");
fputs($conn, "Content-type: multipart/form-data;");
fputs($conn, "boundary=THIS_STRING_SEPARATES");
fputs($conn, "Content-Length: ".strlen($contents));
fputs($conn, "--THIS_STRING_SEPARATES");
fputs($conn, "Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"token\"");
fputs($conn, "MY_KEY_IS_HERE_000000000000000000000000");
fputs($conn, "--THIS_STRING_SEPARATES");
fputs($conn, "Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"file\";");
fputs($conn, "filename=\"listings.csv\"");
fputs($conn, "Content-Type: text/csv");

// SEND THE FILE
fputs($conn, $contents);

// END THE REQUEST
fputs($conn, "--THIS_STRING_SEPARATES");

// GET THE RESULT
while(!feof($conn)) {
    echo fgets($conn, 128);
}

// CLOSE CONNECTION
fclose($conn);

?>

UPDATE: I accidently had error reporting off. Whoops. It is giving me this error:
Quote

Warning: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to https://bulksell.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?FileExchangeProgrammaticDownload:80 (Unable to find the socket transport "https" - did you forget to enable it when you configured PHP?) in C:\home\imafs\public_html\funad\ebay\send_feed.php on line 27

Followed by more errors resulting from that one.