Creating a simple TCP server

Whenever you have to build high performance oriented systems then writing a TCP server is always the best choice over an HTTP server, as TCP sockets are less hefty than HTTP. Go supports and provides a convenient way of writing TCP servers using a net package, which we will be covering in this recipe.

How to do it…

In this recipe, we are going to create a simple TCP server that will accept a connection on localhost:8080. Perform the following steps:

1. Create tcp-server.go and copy the following content:

package main
import 
(
  "log"
  "net"
)
const 
(
  CONN_HOST = "localhost"
  CONN_PORT = "8080"
  CONN_TYPE = "tcp"
)
func main() 
{
  listener, err := net.Listen(CONN_TYPE, CONN_HOST+":"+CONN_PORT)
  if err != nil 
  {
    log.Fatal("Error starting tcp server : ", err)
  }
  defer listener.Close()
  log.Println("Listening on " + CONN_HOST + ":" + CONN_PORT)
  for 
  {
    conn, err := listener.Accept()
    if err != nil 
    {
      log.Fatal("Error accepting: ", err.Error())
    }
    log.Println(conn)
  }
}

2. Run the program with the following command:

$ go run tcp-server.go

How it works…

Once we run the program, the TCP server will start locally listening on port 8080.

Let’s understand what each line in the program means:

• package main: This defines the package name of the program.
• import ( "log" "net"): This is a preprocessor command that tells the Go compiler to include all files from the log and net package.
• const ( CONN_HOST = "localhost" CONN_PORT = "8080" CONN_TYPE = "tcp" ): We declare constants in a Go program using the const keyword. Here, we declare three constants—one is CONN_HOST with a value of localhost, another one is CONN_PORT with a value as 8080, and lastly CONN_TYPE with a value as tcp.

Next, we declared the main() method from where the program execution begins. As this method does a lot of things, let’s understand it line by line:

• listener, err := net.Listen(CONN_TYPE, CONN_HOST+":"+CONN_PORT): This creates a TCP server running on localhost at port 8080.
• if err != nil { log.Fatal("Error starting tcp server: ", err) }: Here, we check if there is any problem in starting the TCP server. If there is, then log the error and exit with a status code of 1.
• defer listener.Close(): This defer statement closes a TCP socket listener when the application closes.

Next, we accept the incoming request to the TCP server in a constant loop, and if there are any errors in accepting the request, then we log it and exit; otherwise, we simply print the connection object on the server console, as follows:

for 
{
  conn, err := listener.Accept()
  if err != nil 
  {
    log.Fatal("Error accepting: ", err.Error())
  }
  log.Println(conn)
}