how to tag clients with winsock

Question

I have a simple server client winsock program running. And wanna know and add 2 things to it.

How do I tag/ID clients?

And be able to send ALL clients data after wards?

This is the connection loop I have at the moment. The "client_id[a]" is something I tried to tag/id the clients but probably incorrect.

for(;;)
{
 if(Connect = accept(Listen, (SOCKADDR*)&Server, &size))
  {
    std::cout<<"\nConnection was reached";    
    a = a +1;
    client_id[a] = accept(Listen, (SOCKADDR*)&Server, &size) ???
  }
}

Using C/C++ and windows.

Hopefully someone can help me solve this problem.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Each client connected to your server has already its own identifier SOCKET. do not use your custom identifier. Also use dynamic array -> std::vector or map in order to keep your clients.

Also you have double accept you will lose every second connection.

std::vector< SOCKET > clients;
...
for(;;)
{
 if(Connect = accept(Listen, (SOCKADDR*)&Server, &size))
  {
    std::cout<<"\nConnection was reached";    
    clients.push_back( Connect )
  }
}

In case of map you have something like

std::map< SOCKET, YouClientClass > clients;
...
for(;;)
{
 if(Connect = accept(Listen, (SOCKADDR*)&Server, &size))
  {
    std::cout<<"\nConnection was reached";    
    clients.insert( std::make_pair( Connect, YourClientClass(Connect))); 
  }
}