Non-blocking Chat Server with epoll

Project roadmap

1. 01

   Set up the non-blocking listening socket

   ~1.5h

   Create a TCP socket set to non-blocking mode and register it with an epoll instance.

2. 02

   Implement the epoll event loop

   ~2.5h

   Build the core loop calling epoll_wait and dispatching readable/writable events to handlers.

3. 03

   Handle partial reads/writes with per-client buffers

   ~3h

   Maintain per-connection read/write buffers to correctly handle partial TCP reads and writes without blocking.

4. 04

   Implement message broadcasting

   ~2h

   Parse complete messages from client buffers and queue them for writing to all other connected clients.

5. 05

   Handle client disconnects and errors

   ~1.5h

   Detect EPOLLHUP/EPOLLERR and closed connections, cleaning up sockets and buffers safely.

6. 06

   Load-test with many concurrent connections

   ~2h

   Write a test client script that opens many simultaneous connections to validate scalability.

Resources

• DocsC++ Language Reference