QTcpSocket state always connected, even unplugging ethernet wire

Question

I have a QTcpSocket and I am reading into a loop. Each time a full packet has been read, or there has been an error, I manually check the status of the socket inside the loo

Answer 1

I've been facing similar problems with a QT client app. Basically I handle it with Timers, signals and slots. When the app starts up, it starts a 4 second checkConnectionTimer. Every 4 seconds the timer expires, if the client socket state != AbstractSocket::Connected or Connecting, it attempt to connect with clientSocket->connectToHost

When the socket signals "connected()", it starts a 5 second server heartbeat timer. The server should send a one byte heartbeat message to its clients every 4 seconds. When I get the heartbeat (or any type of message signaled by readyRead()), I restart the heartbeat timer. So if the heartbeat timer ever has a timeout, I assume the connection to be down and it calls clientSocket->disconnectFromHost ();

This is working very well for all different kinds of disconnects on the server, graceful or otherwise (yanking cable). Yes it requires custom heartbeat type of stuff, but at the end of the day it was the quickest and most portable solution.

I wasn't to keen on setting KEEPALIVE timeouts in the kernel. This way its more portable. In the constructor:

connect(clientSocket, SIGNAL(readyRead()), this, SLOT(readMessage()));
connect(clientSocket, SIGNAL(connected()), this, SLOT(socketConnected()));
connect(clientSocket, SIGNAL(disconnected()), this, SLOT(socketDisconnected()));
connect(heartbeatTimer, SIGNAL(timeout()), this, SLOT(serverTimeout()));
...
// Other Methods

void NetworkClient::checkConnection(){
    if (clientSocket->state() != QAbstractSocket::ConnectedState &&
            clientSocket->state() != QAbstractSocket::ConnectingState){
        connectSocketToHost(clientSocket, hostAddress, port);
    } 
}

void NetworkClient::readMessage()
{
    // Restart the timer by calling start.
    heartbeatTimer->start(5000);
    //Read the data from the socket
    ...
}

void NetworkClient::socketConnected (){
    heartbeatTimer->start(5000);
}

void NetworkClient::socketDisconnected (){
    prioResponseTimer->stop();
}

void NetworkClient::serverTimeout () {
    clientSocket->disconnectFromHost();
}