Third Party Socket Server Connection - Epic Wiki

# Third Party Socket Server Connection

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Template:Rating We’ve been quietly working on our new game here at OSnap! Games and one of the features our new game will include is a lobby system where all players can chat among one another. The UE4 dedicated server is great for a game server but it’s overkill for something as simple as a chat server so we set out to get UE4 connecting to a third party socket server.

# Contents

# Creating the Socket

The first step in getting UE4 connected to a third party server is initializing a socket.

FSocket* Socket = ISocketSubsystem::Get(PLATFORM_SOCKETSUBSYSTEM)->CreateSocket(NAME_Stream, TEXT("default"), false);

The parameters are as follows

  1. Type
  2. Description
  3. ForceUDP

In our case we're connecting using TCP so we've set ForceUDP to false.

# Preparing the Address

The next part is getting the address you wish to connect to ready. Epic provides the tools to get this done quickly.

FIPv4Address ip(127, 0, 0, 1);

TSharedRef addr = ISocketSubsystem::Get(PLATFORM_SOCKETSUBSYSTEM)->CreateInternetAddr(); addr->SetIp(ip.Value); addr->SetPort(7776);

Now that your address is ready to go you simply have to tell UE4 to start the connection.

bool connected = Socket->Connect(*addr);

If connected is true you've successfully connected to your socket server!

# Sending a Message

Alright, so you're connected but how do you send messages to it? A lot of that is up to you. Depending on your server there are different ways to serialize and send a message. The important part though is how does UE4 handle it.

First things first, we must prepare the message to be sent.

FString serialized = TEXT("loadPlayer|1"); TCHAR *serializedChar = serialized.GetCharArray().GetData(); int32 size = FCString::Strlen(serializedChar); int32 sent = 0;

What's going on in the above? We're sending a message to a socket server with the type "loadPlayer" and a single parameter of 1. What is happening in UE4 here is we're taking an FString, and turning it into a TCHAR*.

Finally, with the message formatted we can send it to our server!

bool successful = Socket->Send((uint8*)TCHAR_TO_UTF8(serializedChar), size, sent);

Sending data in UE4 requires it to be a uint8* and again, Epic provides the tools to get from TCHAR* to UTF8 which can be sent as a uint8*.

As far as reading data back from your socket server the key is in the functions HasPendingData and Recv of the FSocket class.

# Dependency in Build.cs

One final thing to take note of. Inside your project's Build.cs file you'll need to add the "Sockets" package as a dependency in PublicDependencyModuleNames.

PublicDependencyModuleNames.AddRange( new string[] { "Core", "CoreUObject", "Engine", "Sockets" } );

Reposted from http://www.osnapgames.com/2014/05/24/connecting-to-a-third-party-socket-server-in-unreal-engine-4/

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