request basic example code please

[ElectricRCAircraftGuy]

Hi, can you make an example folder and include a few basic examples, please? I'm trying to use this library and I'm struggling with it. Having to google a lot. I"m not familiar with "opaque structs" for instance.

A basic read/write example, list ports example, etc, would be really helpful.

Many thanks,

Gabriel.

[Spork-Schivago]

I too would like to see this. I subscribed to the mailing list and sent a message. Before I got an answer though, I sent another message to who I believe is the author. I got a response from the mailing list. I just had to wait a little bit longer. Anyway, I can share with you ElectricRCAircraftGuy what was shared with me.

I only asked for an example on how to enumerate serial ports, you know, have the OS report a list of serial ports found. This is the example they shared:

    #include <stdio.h>
    #include <libserialport.h>

    int main(void)
    {
            int i;
            struct sp_port **ports;

            sp_list_ports(&ports);

            for (i = 0; ports[i]; i++)
                    printf("Found port: '%s'.\n", sp_get_port_name(ports[i]));

            sp_free_port_list(ports);
    }

Although I would love to take credit for this sample, this information was provided by the very nice and very talented Mr. Uwe Hermann. So any credit should go to him. If I can get the library compiled for Windows 7, I'll share more examples as I learn them if you'd like.

[ElectricRCAircraftGuy]

Hey thanks! And that sounds great. By the way, I'm brand-new to C++ on a computer (I've done Arduino and AVR microcontroller C and C++ code though), and I have the library running on Windows 8.1 just fine. I just copied and pasted the "libserialport.h" and "serialport.c" files into my working directory, and it all compiles and runs just fine. I'm using Code::Blocks, running a C++ Console Project. I imagine this would work fine for Windows 7 too.

[martinling]

We are working on a new release and as part of that, I have finally started writing up some examples and integrating them into the documentation. The first two (list_ports and port_info) are now included in the API docs and can also be found in the examples directory in the repository. I plan to add more soon, to cover all the main functions and use cases.

[ElectricRCAircraftGuy]

Thanks! Glad to have this in there. Note that I've progressed a bit since originally posting this request. :) In 2015 I didn't know what opaque pointers/structs were, for instance, but now I do. That being said, any complex level of abstraction is always benefited with thorough examples and comments. And in C, virtually all abstraction is complex.