netkit

C++23 cross-platform networking toolkit library providing safe Unix-style sockets and protocol abstractions.

Please note, this library is still work in progress. Usage is not recommended yet, aside from tests. Contributions and bug reports are much appreciated!

Features

• Binding, connecting, sending, receiving and closing synchronous TCP/UDP sockets
• HTTP/1.0 and HTTP/1.1 body parser, including headers and body.
• IPv4 and IPv6 support
• TCP and UDP support
• TLS/SSL sockets and HTTP abstraction (OpenSSL or WolfSSL integration)
• DNS resolution
• Network interface enumeration
• Exceptions for errors
• Inheritable classes for easy extension
• Designed for C++23, with optional C bindings for use in non-C++ projects and interoperability with other programming languages entirely
• Support for Windows, Linux, macOS and other Unix-compatible systems.
• Support for DevkitPro (Wii and GameCube)
• Permissive MIT license, allowing use in both open source and proprietary software.

Still missing:

• Asynchronous I/O
• Schannel support for Windows
• WebSocket abstraction

Dependencies

• OpenSSL or WolfSSL (optional)
• C++23 compiler
• CMake

Options

netkit's CMakeLists.txt offers multiple options:

• NETKIT_ENABLE_OPENSSL: Enable OpenSSL-backed SSL/TLS (not compatible with DevkitPro)
• NETKIT_ENABLE_WOLFSSL: Enable WolfSSL-backed SSL/TLS (cannot be used with NETKIT_ENABLE_OPENSSL)
• NETKIT_ENABLE_TESTS: Enable Catch2 tests for the main C++ library
• NETKIT_ENABLE_C_BINDINGS: Enable C bindings for netkit
• NETKIT_ENABLE_C_TESTS: Enable tests for netkit C bindings
• NETKIT_ENABLE_WINDOWS_CERTSTORE: Enable getting CA certificates from the Windows store
• NETKIT_ENABLE_FALLBACK_CA: Enable fallback hardcoded CA certificate (required for DevkitPro with TLS enabled)
• NETKIT_WOLFSSL_DEBUG: Enable debugging for WolfSSL and netkit WolfSSL functions
• NETKIT_BUILD_SHARED: Build a shared library version of netkit (If disabled, netkit will be static)

Building

mkdir -p build/; cd build/
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release # if using devkitpro, -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=${DEVKITPRO}/cmake/Wii.cmake
cmake --build .
cmake --install .

Usage

You can use CMake and link with netkit, which will in turn link with the necessary libraries:

...

find_package(netkit)

add_executable(
        MY_TARGET
        main.cpp
)
target_link_libraries(netkit-example PRIVATE
	netkit::netkit
)

...

If you wish to use the C bindings, link with netkit::netkit-c instead.

See examples/c/ and examples/cpp/ for further examples of how to use the library.

Netkit can also be statically linked, and for users of DevkitPro it will be automatically.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.

Copyright (c) 2025-2026 Jacob Nilsson