Microsoft Docs

Winsock Functions

This section provides reference information for the Windows Sockets API (Winsock) functions. Winsock is a Microsoft implementation of the Berkeley sockets API, providing a network programming interface for Windows.

Core Networking Functions

socket

Creates a socket that is bound to a specific transport service provider.

bind

Associates a local protocol information structure with a socket.

connect

Establishes a connection to a specified remote socket.

listen

Puts a socket into a listening state for incoming connection requests.

accept

Permits an incoming connection on a socket.

send

Sends data on a connected socket.

recv

Receives data from a connected socket or bound-to-connection socket.

closesocket

Closes an existing socket.

Address Information Functions

getaddrinfo

Translates a network address structure to a human-readable representation.

freeaddrinfo

Frees address information returned by the getaddrinfo function.

Error Handling Functions

WSAGetLastError

Retrieves the error code for the last Windows Sockets operation that failed.

WSASetLastError

Sets the last error for the calling thread.

Helper Functions

ntohs

Converts a 16-bit quantity from network byte order to host byte order.

htons

Converts a 16-bit quantity from host byte order to network byte order.

ntohl

Converts a 32-bit quantity from network byte order to host byte order.

htonl

Converts a 32-bit quantity from host byte order to network byte order.