Okay, for now I have figured out a working solution to the original problem I was facing .....

I just forkIO another IO action that does the actual network work and in addition, it opens a server socket and waits for commands.

The calls from C reach Haskell, from where a connection is made to the server and command is sent. A little convoluted but works. I have the whole implementation here - https://github.com/ckkashyap/gmail

So now I am able to create a standalone, self sufficient DLL that I can just hand off to the folks in my org and they can write a C program and connect to gmail!!!!

Hey Donn ... when you say, implement the IO in C, you also imply implementing the SSL stuff too right? ... that's one thing I wanted to avoid - and I was also reluctant to use something like openSSL because that would come in the way of making standalone, self - sufficient DLL.

I really have to see what kind of performance hit my DLL has ...

Regards,

Kashyap

On Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 12:07 AM, Donn Cave <donn@avvanta.com> wrote:

Quoth C K Kashyap <ckkashyap@gmail.com>,

> I am using http://hackage.haskell.org/package/connection.
> So I create network connection in Haskell
>
> getConnection :: IO Connection
>
> I'd like this connection to be returned to C so that subsequent calls from
> C can send in the connection handle.

According to the documentation, he doesn't export enough of the
Connection type to access the handle inside, and there appears to
be no function provided to do that either. So it looks to me like
you'd have to 1) make the connection "by hand" with Network.Socket.connect
etc., 2) get the Socket fd, 3) make a Handle from the Socket,
4) pass that to connectFromHandle, and 5) use the fd with your
C function.

Note that the socket connection itself, represented by the fd that
you return to C, will simply transmit data back and forth without
modification. Specifically without SSL encryption. If you need
SSL encryption in both Haskell and C, it would probably be simpler
to implement the I/O in C and call it from Haskell.

Donn

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