WSASendTo

The Windows Sockets WSASendTo function sends data to a specific destination, using overlapped I/O where applicable.

int WSASendTo (
  SOCKET s,                                               
  LPWSABUF lpBuffers,                                     
  DWORD dwBufferCount,                                    
  LPDWORD lpNumberOfBytesSent,                            
  DWORD dwFlags,                                          
  const struct sockaddr FAR * lpTo,                       
  int iToLen,                                             
  LPWSAOVERLAPPED lpOverlapped,                           
  LPWSAOVERLAPPED_COMPLETION_ROUTINE lpCompletionROUTINE  
);
 

Parameters

s
[in] A descriptor identifying a (possibly connected) socket.
lpBuffers
[in] A pointer to an array of WSABUF structures. Each WSABUF structure contains a pointer to a buffer and the length of the buffer. This array must remain valid for the duration of the send operation.
dwBufferCount
[in] The number of WSABUF structures in the lpBuffers array.
lpNumberOfBytesSent
[out] A pointer to the number of bytes sent by this call if the I/O operation completes immediately.
dwFlags
[in] An indicator specifying the way in which the call is made.
lpTo
[in] An optional pointer to the address of the target socket.
iToLen
[in] The size of the address in lpTo.
lpOverlapped
[in] A pointer to a WSAOVERLAPPED structure (ignored for nonoverlapped sockets).
lpCompletionRoutine
[in] A pointer to the completion routine called when the send operation has been completed (ignored for nonoverlapped sockets).

Remarks

The WSASendTo function provides functionality over and above the standard sendto function in two important areas:

  1. It can be used in conjunction with overlapped sockets to perform overlapped send operations.
  2. It allows multiple send buffers to be specified making it applicable to the scatter/gather type of I/O.

The WSASendTo function is normally used on a connectionless socket specified by s to send a datagram contained in one or more buffers to a specific peer socket identified by the lpTo parameter. Even if the connectionless socket has been previously connected using the connect function to a specific address, lpTo overrides the destination address for that particular datagram only. On a connection-oriented socket, the lpTo and iToLen parameters are ignored; in this case, the WSASendTo is equivalent to WSASend.

For overlapped sockets (created using WSASocket with flag WSA_FLAG_OVERLAPPED) sending data uses overlapped I/O, unless both lpOverlapped and lpCompletionRoutine are NULL in which case the socket is treated as a nonoverlapped socket. A completion indication will occur (invoking the completion routine or setting of an event object) when the supplied buffer(s) have been consumed by the transport. If the operation does not complete immediately, the final completion status is retrieved through the completion routine or WSAGetOverlappedResult.

If both lpOverlapped and lpCompletionRoutine are NULL, the socket in this function will be treated as a non-overlapped socket.

For nonoverlapped sockets, the last two parameters (lpOverlapped, lpCompletionRoutine) are ignored and WSASendTo adopts the same blocking semantics as send. Data is copied from the supplied buffer(s) into the transport's buffer. If the socket is nonblocking and stream oriented, and there is not sufficient space in the transport's buffer, WSASendTo returns with only part of the application's buffers having been consumed. Given the same buffer situation and a blocking socket, WSASendTo will block until all of the application's buffer contents have been consumed.

The array of WSABUF structures indicated by the lpBuffers parameter is transient. If this operation is completed in an overlapped manner, it is the sercvice provider's responsibility to capture these WSABUF structures before returning from this call. This enables applications to build stack-based WSABUF arrays.

For message-oriented sockets, care must be taken not to exceed the maximum message size of the underlying transport, which can be obtained by getting the value of socket option SO_MAX_MSG_SIZE. If the data is too long to pass atomically through the underlying protocol the error WSAEMSGSIZE is returned, and no data is transmitted.

The successful completion of a WSASendTo does not indicate that the data was successfully delivered.

The dwFlags parameter can be used to influence the behavior of the function invocation beyond the options specified for the associated socket. That is, the semantics of this function are determined by the socket options and the dwFlags parameter. The latter is constructed by or-ing any of the following values:

Value Meaning
MSG_DONTROUTE Specifies that the data should not be subject to routing. A Windows Socket service provider may choose to ignore this flag.
MSG_OOB Send out-of-band data (stream-style socket such as SOCK_STREAM only).
MSG_PARTIAL Specifies that lpBuffers only contains a partial message. Note that the error code WSAEOPNOTSUPP will be returned by transports that do not support partial message transmissions.

Overlapped socket I/O

If an overlapped operation completes immediately, WSASendTo returns a value of zero and the lpNumberOfBytesSent parameter is updated with the number of bytes sent. If the overlapped operation is successfully initiated and will complete later, WSASendTo returns SOCKET_ERROR and indicates error code WSA_IO_PENDING. In this case, lpNumberOfBytesSent is not updated. When the overlapped operation completes the amount of data transferred is indicated either through the cbTransferred parameter in the completion routine (if specified), or through the lpcbTransfer parameter in WSAGetOverlappedResult.

The WSASendTo function can be called from within the completion routine of a previous WSARecv, WSARecvFrom, WSASend or WSASendTo function. This permits time-sensitive data transmissions to occur entirely within a preemptive context.

The lpOverlapped parameter must be valid for the duration of the overlapped operation. If multiple I/O operations are simultaneously outstanding, each must reference a separate WSAOVERLAPPED structure.

If the lpCompletionRoutine parameter is NULL, the hEvent field of lpOverlapped is signaled when the overlapped operation completes if it contains a valid event object handle. An application can use WSAWaitForMultipleEvents or WSAGetOverlappedResult to wait or poll on the event object.

If lpCompletionRoutine is not NULL, the hEvent field is ignored and can be used by the application to pass context information to the completion routine. A caller that passes a non-NULL lpCompletionRoutine and later calls WSAGetOverlappedResult for the same overlapped IO request may not set the fWait parameter for that invocation of WSAGetOverlappedResult to TRUE. In this case the usage of the hEvent field is undefined, and attempting to wait on the hEvent field would produce unpredictable results.

The completion routine follows the same rules as stipulated for Win32 file I/O completion routines. The completion routine will not be invoked until the thread is in an alertable wait state such as can occur when the function WSAWaitForMultipleEvents with the fAlertable parameter set to TRUE is invoked.

Transport providers allow an application to invoke send and receive operations from within the context of the socket I/O completion routine, and guarantee that, for a given socket, I/O completion routines will not be nested. This permits time-sensitive data transmissions to occur entirely within a preemptive context.

The prototype of the completion routine is as follows:

void CALLBACK CompletionROUTINE(
  IN DWORD dwError,
  IN DWORD cbTransferred,
  IN LPWSAOVERLAPPED lpOverlapped,
  IN DWORD dwFlags
);

The CompletionRoutine function is a placeholder for an application-defined or library-defined function name. The dwError paramter specifies the completion status for the overlapped operation as indicated by lpOverlapped. The cbTransferred parameter specifies the number of bytes sent. Currently there are no flag values defined and dwFlags will be zero. This function does not return a value.

Returning from this function allows invocation of another pending completion routine for this socket. All waiting completion routines are called before the alertable thread's wait is satisfied with a return code of WSA_IO_COMPLETION. The completion routines can be called in any order, not necessarily in the same order the overlapped operations are completed. However, the posted buffers are guaranteed to be sent in the same order they are supplied.

Return Values

If no error occurs and the send operation has completed immediately, WSASendTo returns zero. In this case, the completion routine will have already been scheduled to be called once the calling thread is in the alertable state. Otherwise, a value of SOCKET_ERROR is returned, and a specific error code can be retrieved by calling WSAGetLastError. The error code WSA_IO_PENDING indicates that the overlapped operation has been successfully initiated and that completion will be indicated at a later time. Any other error code indicates that the overlapped operation was not successfully initiated and no completion indication will occur.

Error Codes

WSANOTINITIALISED A successful WSAStartup must occur before using this function.
WSAENETDOWN The network subsystem has failed.
WSAEACCES The requested address is a broadcast address, but the appropriate flag was not set.
WSAEINTR A blocking Windows Socket 1.1 call was canceled through WSACancelBlockingCall.
WSAEINPROGRESS A blocking Windows Sockets 1.1 call is in progress, or the service provider is still processing a callback function.
WSAEFAULT The lpBuffers, lpTo, lpOverlapped, lpNumberOfBytesSent, or lpCompletionRoutine parameters are not part of the user address space, or the lpTo argument is too small.
WSAENETRESET The connection has been broken due to "keep-alive" activity detecting a failure while the operation was in progress.
WSAENOBUFS The Windows Sockets provider reports a buffer deadlock.
WSAENOTCONN The socket is not connected (connection-oriented sockets only)
WSAENOTSOCK The descriptor is not a socket.
WSAEOPNOTSUPP MSG_OOB was specified, but the socket is not stream-style such as type SOCK_STREAM, out-of-band data is not supported in the communication domain associated with this socket, MSG_PARTIAL is not supported, or the socket is unidirectional and supports only receive operations.
WSAESHUTDOWN The socket has been shut down; it is not possible to WSASendTo on a socket after shutdown has been invoked with how set to SD_SEND or SD_BOTH.
WSAEWOULDBLOCK Overlapped sockets: There are too many outstanding overlapped I/O requests. Nonoverlapped sockets: The socket is marked as nonblocking and the send operation cannot be completed immediately.
WSAEMSGSIZE The socket is message oriented, and the message is larger than the maximum supported by the underlying transport.
WSAEINVAL The socket has not been bound with bind, or the socket is not created with the overlapped flag.
WSAECONNABORTED The virtual circuit was terminated due to a time-out or other failure.
WSAECONNRESET The virtual circuit was reset by the remote side.
WSAEADDRNOTAVAIL The remote address is not a valid address (such as ADDR_ANY).
WSAEAFNOSUPPORT Addresses in the specified family cannot be used with this socket.
WSAEDESTADDRREQ A destination address is required.
WSAENETUNREACH The network cannot be reached from this host at this time.
WSA_IO_PENDING An overlapped operation was successfully initiated and completion will be indicated at a later time.
WSA_OPERATION_ABORTED The overlapped operation has been canceled due to the closure of the socket, or the execution of the SIO_FLUSH command in WSAIoctl.

QuickInfo

  Windows NT: Yes
  Windows: Yes
  Windows CE: Unsupported.
  Header: Declared in winsock2.h.
  Import Library: Link with ws2_32.lib.

See Also

WSACloseEvent, WSACreateEvent, WSAGetOverlappedResult, WSASocket, WSAWaitForMultipleEvents