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Inside Macintosh: Networking /

Chapter 3 - Name-Binding Protocol (NBP) / NBP Reference

Data Structures

Entity Name Record

The entity name record is a data structure of type EntityName that is used to hold the NBP name for an entity that is associated with a socket address. Your application looks up or confirms an address or removes a names table entry based on an entity name.

Because the object, type, and zone names that constitute the entity name in this format are packed data and of arbitrary length, you cannot create this record in Pascal (which requires you to declare the length of character strings when you define the record). If you are using the NBP Pascal interface, you put an existing entity name into the structure that NBP requires using the NBPSetEntity procedure.

TYPE
   EntityName = 
   RECORD
      objStr:  Str32;
      typeStr: Str32;
      zoneStr: Str32;
   END;
   EntityPtr = ^EntityName;

Field Description

objStr

The object part of an entity name. It consists of an alphanumeric string of up to 31 characters. The object part of the name can be any valid string; it is commonly used to identify the user of the system.

typeStr

The type part of an entity name. It consists of an alphanumeric string of up to 31 characters. The type part of the name can be any valid string, but it is commonly used to identify the type of service that the entity provides.

zoneStr

The zone part of an entity name. It consists of an alphanumeric string of up to 31 characters that identifies the zone to which the node belongs that is running the process.