Advice about function calling conventions when using sockets

Question

I plan to use sockets to make function calls between a client 32 bit application and a 64 bit application.

What would be the best scheme to call functions, pass variables and return parameters via the socket interface. I have control over both the client and the server code so I can implement anything.

I was thinking, to have the socket packet being made up of: - 1 word: length (# of characters) of the function name - string: the actual function name - 1 word: length (in bytes) of the function parameters - function parameters

Please let me know, what would be the most robust and extensible approaches. Maybe I can reuse principles used by calling conventions by compilers, web services or virtual machines.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I suggest that you use Protocol Buffers for the serialization:

http://code.google.com/apis/protocolbuffers/docs/reference/cpp/index.html

Tutorial:

http://code.google.com/apis/protocolbuffers/docs/cpptutorial.html

When you send the object to the other side, start with a length prefix (32bit int) which defines how many bytes you should read to get a complete protobuf message.