WiFi: using client/server connection before "server.available()"

Using Arduino Networking, Protocols, and Devices
1

In the WiFiNINA library the client is available only if it send something to the server but I need to have a connection object available before, just after the connection in accepted.
I saw there is the undocumented method "accept()" of the class "WiFiServer". Someone can give me some information about?

WiFiServer g_theServer(1234);

void setup() 
{
  // WiFi connection

 ...

  g_theServer.begin();
}

void loop() 
{
  // Gets a client that is connected to the server and has data available for reading.

  WiFiClient theClient = g_theServer.available();

  if (theClient) 
  {}
}
2

It's too long ago that I worked with the stuff on computer systems. Maybe this helps: accept(2) - Linux manual page

The full search was man accept - Google Search

3

Thank you very much but it's not what I'm looking for (the link you post is the well-known Berkeley sockets "accept()" function).

4

I briefly perused the source (at GitHub - arduino-libraries/WiFiNINA), and this library seems like it's not very well designed. For one, it doesn't have an accept() method, as you pointed out. How is a server to know when a client connects but doesn't send data? The WifiServer::available() method, as the Ethernet library points out, "makes some protocols like FTP impossible to properly implement". And I already found one bug just by looking at the code:

In src/utility/server_drv.cpp:

    SpiDrv::sendParam(peek, LAST_PARAM);

That should be:

    SpiDrv::sendParam(peek, 1, LAST_PARAM);

The lastParam parameter of sendParam() is the 3rd. The second parameter is param_len.

5

Yes, to be kind we can say that this library is not very well designed... :wink:
I'll do an ugly workaround to proceed with my project and then I'll try to modify the library or write a new one.