Why does recvfrom care about who the data comes from

Question

So, I'm creating a server in C which uses UDP, and I want to listen for incoming packets from many sources. Therefore, when I call ssize_t recvfrom(int, void *, size_t, int, struct sockaddr * __restrict, socklen_t * __restrict), the 5th parameter, that which contains the sender's information, may vary.

Is there a way to receive the packets without knowing each individual client's address information? And, is this possible with C's library?

Here's my code:

int file_descriptor;
char data[1024];
int bytes_recved;
sockaddr_in iDontKnow;
socklen_t addr_len = sizeof(iDontKnow);
if ((bytes_recved = recvfrom(file_descriptor, data, strlen(data), 0, (struct sockaddr*)&iDontKnow, &addr_len)) < 0) {
    perror("Failed to receive data");
}

I noticed that when receiving data with Java's DatagramSocket and DatagramPacket classes, the DatagramSocket's receive function took in a parameter of type DatagramPacket. This DatagramPacket, however, only held the object in which to place the data. So, why does C's implementation of UDP receiving require that you know the sender's information?

Answer 1

Is there a way to receive the packets without knowing each individual client's address information?

Well, you don't need to know the sender information beforehand, anyway. Once a packet is received, the sender information (if available) will be stored into address.

From the man page,

ssize_t recvfrom(int socket, void *restrict buffer, size_t length,
                   int flags, struct sockaddr *restrict address,
                   socklen_t *restrict address_len);

[...] If the address argument is not a null pointer and the protocol provides the source address of messages, the source address of the received message shall be stored in the sockaddr structure pointed to by the address argument, and the length of this address shall be stored in the object pointed to by the address_len argument.

Regarding the why part, in case of connectionless sockets, unless you know of the sender address for a packet in a communication, you cannot reply or respond to the sender. So, it is required to know the sender info specifically in connectionless mode and there comes recvfrom() which, along with the received data, gives us the info about the sender, also.

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EDIT:

In your code

recvfrom(file_descriptor, data, strlen(data), 0, (struct sockaddr*)&iDontKnow, &addr_len)

is wrong, as strlen(data) is UB, as you're trying to count the length of an uninitialized char array, which is not qualified to be a string. It invokes undefined behavior. You may want to use sizeof(data), as data is an array.

In case you're not interested in sender's info, just pass a NULL as the corresponding argument.

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To add to that, for connectionless sockets (UDP), it's actually required to get the sender information. For connection oriented sockets, you have another stripped-down alternative , recv() which only takes care of receiving and storing the data.