NAME

getaddrinfo, freeaddrinfo, allocaddrinfo — host and service name to socket address structure

SYNOPSIS

#include <netdb.h>

int
getaddrinfo(const char * restrict hostname, const char * restrict servname, const struct addrinfo * restrict hints, struct addrinfo ** restrict res);

void
freeaddrinfo(struct addrinfo *ai);

struct addrinfo *
allocaddrinfo(socklen_t len);

DESCRIPTION

The getaddrinfo() function is used to get a list of IP addresses and port numbers for host hostname and service servname. It is a replacement for and provides more flexibility than the gethostbyname(3) and getservbyname(3) functions.

The hostname and servname arguments are either pointers to NUL-terminated strings or the null pointer. An acceptable value for hostname is either a valid host name or a numeric host address string consisting of a dotted decimal IPv4 address or an IPv6 address. The servname is either a decimal port number or a service name listed in services(5). At least one of hostname and servname must be non-null.

hints is an optional pointer to a struct addrinfo, as defined by <netdb.h>:

struct addrinfo { 
	int ai_flags;		/* input flags */ 
	int ai_family;		/* address family for socket */ 
	int ai_socktype;	/* socket type */ 
	int ai_protocol;	/* protocol for socket */ 
	socklen_t ai_addrlen;	/* length of socket-address */ 
	struct sockaddr *ai_addr; /* socket-address for socket */ 
	char *ai_canonname;	/* canonical name for service location */ 
	struct addrinfo *ai_next; /* pointer to next in list */ 
};

This structure can be used to provide hints concerning the type of socket that the caller supports or wishes to use. The caller can supply the following structure elements in hints:

All other elements of the addrinfo structure passed via hints must be zero or the null pointer.

If hints is the null pointer, getaddrinfo() behaves as if the caller provided a struct addrinfo with ai_family set to AF_UNSPEC and all other elements set to zero or NULL.

After a successful call to getaddrinfo(), *res is a pointer to a linked list of one or more addrinfo structures. The list can be traversed by following the ai_next pointer in each addrinfo structure until a null pointer is encountered. The three members ai_family, ai_socktype, and ai_protocol in each returned addrinfo structure are suitable for a call to socket(2). For each addrinfo structure in the list, the ai_addr member points to a filled-in socket address structure of length ai_addrlen.

This implementation of getaddrinfo() allows numeric IPv6 address notation with scope identifier, as documented in chapter 11 of draft-ietf-ipv6-scoping-arch-02.txt. By appending the percent character and scope identifier to addresses, one can fill the sin6_scope_id field for addresses. This would make management of scoped addresses easier and allows cut-and-paste input of scoped addresses.

At this moment the code supports only link-local addresses with the format. The scope identifier is hardcoded to the name of the hardware interface associated with the link (such as ne0). An example is “fe80::1%ne0”, which means “fe80::1 on the link associated with the ne0 interface”.

The current implementation assumes a one-to-one relationship between the interface and link, which is not necessarily true from the specification.

All of the information returned by getaddrinfo() is dynamically allocated: the addrinfo structures themselves as well as the socket address structures and the canonical host name strings included in the addrinfo structures.

Memory allocated for the dynamically allocated structures created by a successful call to getaddrinfo() is released by the freeaddrinfo() function. The ai pointer should be an addrinfo structure created by a call to getaddrinfo() or allocaddrinfo(). The allocaddrinfo() function is intended primarily for authors of nsdispatch(3) plugins implementing getaddrinfo() backends. allocaddrinfo() allocates a struct addrinfo in a way that is compatible with being returned from getaddrinfo() and being ultimately freed by freeaddrinfo(). The returned structure is zeroed, except for the ai_addr field, which will point to len bytes of memory for storage of a socket address. It is safe to allocate memory separately for ai_canonname with malloc(3), or in any other way that is compatible with deallocation by free(3).

RETURN VALUES

getaddrinfo() returns zero on success or one of the error codes listed in gai_strerror(3) if an error occurs.

EXAMPLES

The following code tries to connect to “www.kame.net” service “http” via a stream socket. It loops through all the addresses available, regardless of address family. If the destination resolves to an IPv4 address, it will use an AF_INET socket. Similarly, if it resolves to IPv6, an AF_INET6 socket is used. Observe that there is no hardcoded reference to a particular address family. The code works even if getaddrinfo() returns addresses that are not IPv4/v6.

struct addrinfo hints, *res, *res0; 
int error; 
int s; 
const char *cause = NULL; 
 
memset(&hints, 0, sizeof(hints)); 
hints.ai_family = AF_UNSPEC; 
hints.ai_socktype = SOCK_STREAM; 
error = getaddrinfo("www.kame.net", "http", &hints, &res0); 
if (error) { 
	errx(1, "%s", gai_strerror(error)); 
	/*NOTREACHED*/ 
} 
s = -1; 
for (res = res0; res; res = res->ai_next) { 
	s = socket(res->ai_family, res->ai_socktype, 
	    res->ai_protocol); 
	if (s < 0) { 
		cause = "socket"; 
		continue; 
	} 
 
	if (connect(s, res->ai_addr, res->ai_addrlen) < 0) { 
		cause = "connect"; 
		close(s); 
		s = -1; 
		continue; 
	} 
 
	break;	/* okay we got one */ 
} 
if (s < 0) { 
	err(1, "%s", cause); 
	/*NOTREACHED*/ 
} 
freeaddrinfo(res0);

The following example tries to open a wildcard listening socket onto service “http”, for all the address families available.

struct addrinfo hints, *res, *res0; 
int error; 
int s[MAXSOCK]; 
int nsock; 
const char *cause = NULL; 
 
memset(&hints, 0, sizeof(hints)); 
hints.ai_family = AF_UNSPEC; 
hints.ai_socktype = SOCK_STREAM; 
hints.ai_flags = AI_PASSIVE; 
error = getaddrinfo(NULL, "http", &hints, &res0); 
if (error) { 
	errx(1, "%s", gai_strerror(error)); 
	/*NOTREACHED*/ 
} 
nsock = 0; 
for (res = res0; res && nsock < MAXSOCK; res = res->ai_next) { 
	s[nsock] = socket(res->ai_family, res->ai_socktype, 
	    res->ai_protocol); 
	if (s[nsock] < 0) { 
		cause = "socket"; 
		continue; 
	} 
 
	if (bind(s[nsock], res->ai_addr, res->ai_addrlen) < 0) { 
		cause = "bind"; 
		close(s[nsock]); 
		continue; 
	} 
	(void) listen(s[nsock], 5); 
 
	nsock++; 
} 
if (nsock == 0) { 
	err(1, "%s", cause); 
	/*NOTREACHED*/ 
} 
freeaddrinfo(res0);

STANDARDS

The getaddrinfo() function is defined by the IEEE Std 1003.1g-2000 (“POSIX.1”) draft specification and documented in RFC 3493, “Basic Socket Interface Extensions for IPv6”.