Microsoft recently announced the release of WinSock and associated open source libraries that help deliver on the cross-platform Windows Store apps.
With the release of Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 in August, the Windows App Certification Kit (WACK) provides an ability to make use of WinSock APIs in your Windows Store apps. As of the time of this writing, WinSock is available for Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1 and universal apps.
Microsoft has listened to feedback provided by Windows Apps developers by incorporating WinSock APIs. Previously, apps which make use of WinSock APIs were blocked at certification by the Windows Store. This recent development is in addition to the addition of Windows Store and Phone support for CMake few days back.
The recent support for WinSock throw open several dependent libraries such as Libwebsockets, libcURL and OpenSSL for Windows apps developers.
Libwebsockets is a lightweight pure C library that uses minimum CPU and consumes less memory. It also provides fast throughput in both directions. libcURL is a free and open source client to retrieve documents and files from servers using a variety of supported protocols.
OpenSSL is a library toolkit which implements Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3), Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) protocols in addition to general purpose cryptography library. The library has been developed in such a way that it supports Windows Phone and Store apps.
“While OpenSSL enables you to re-use your existing cross-platform code, you can also use the Windows Security and Cryptography APIs which provide secured communication features natively in WinRT, when you decide to rewrite your code or build new Windows apps,” said Kevin Gallo, Microsoft.
