linux C server client streaming files - c

Question

I am trying to stream files from the client to the server, but there is a incompatible data type from FILE to char, so everytime i run the client it gives me a segmentation error. I dont know how to get around this. Attached is the code for the server and client and below the problem with the client. i am trying to read file from client to buffer send it to server and server will read file from buffer and write it to a file.
client side http://pastebin.com/QtLbMgP3
server side http://pastebin.com/8PNchBUZ
// n = write(sock,"send me your message",18);
printf("Please enter the message: ");
bzero(buffer,256);
fgets(buffer,255,stdin);
ptr_myfile=fopen("test2.txt","w");
for(counter=1;counter <=10;counter++){
fwrite(&ptr_myfile,sizeof(*buffer),1,buffer);
n = read(sockfd,buffer,255);
n = write(sockfd,buffer,18);
n = write(sockfd,buffer,strlen(buffer));
if (n < 0) error("ERROR writing to socket");
bzero(buffer,256);
n = read(sockfd,buffer,255);
if (n < 0) error("ERROR reading from socket");
// printf("%s\n",buffer);
};//close for loop
close(sockfd);
}// close event loop
return 0;
}// close main function

Answer 1

Without going through all your code, the read, write, close series of APIs (NOT fopen, fread, etc) have an integer descriptor, not a FILE*.
You can't mix FILE* with int.

Answer 2

Looking at this line here:
fwrite(&ptr_myfile,sizeof(*buffer),1,buffer);
How does that even compile?
This is likely correct:
fwrite(buffer, 1, sizeof(buffer), ptr_myfile );
The above line will read up to 256 bytes (the size of your buffer array) from the file and copy the data into buffer. Notice that I'm passing ptr_myfile, not &ptr_myfile.

Answer 3

Check your fwrite statement, are you trying to write into the file, or read from the file into the buffer?
If it is the previous case, then use fwrite(buffer, sizeof(buffer),1, ptr_myfile) i.e. the stream to which you are writing to is the last variable.
If the case is latter then you will first need to read from the stream using fgets or getchar or some function like that before you actually put it into the buffer.
Hope it helps!
Okay, to read a file at the client and send it to server,
fp=fopen("<filename>", "r");
//This opens the file and initializes the pointer fp to the start of the file Start of
//the file, not its text necessarily
Now you could use fgetc() function [Character by character] or fgets() function [In case the text is formatted, you can read the entire line into the buffer] to read from your file into the buffer.
fgets(buffer,sizeof(buffer),fp);
//This could be ambiguous as the second argument should correspond to
//pre-known limit of bytes to read here some Macro maybe.
Now, simple use send() to dispatch this buffer to server.
On the server side, receive the input data from network into some 'buffer' using recv() and use fputs or fprintf or any convenient function to write into the file opened there in Write mode.