WSASetServiceA function (winsock2.h)

Article
02/09/2023

The WSASetService function registers or removes from the registry a service instance within one or more namespaces.

Syntax

INT WSAAPI WSASetServiceA(
  [in] LPWSAQUERYSETA   lpqsRegInfo,
  [in] WSAESETSERVICEOP essoperation,
  [in] DWORD            dwControlFlags
);

Parameters

[in] lpqsRegInfo

A pointer to the service information for registration or deregistration.

[in] essoperation

A value that determines that operation requested. This parameter can be one of the values from the WSAESETSERVICEOP enumeration type defined in the Winsock2.h header file.

Value	Meaning
RNRSERVICE_REGISTER	Register the service. For SAP, this means sending out a periodic broadcast. This is an NOP for the DNS namespace. For persistent data stores, this means updating the address information.
RNRSERVICE_DEREGISTER	Remove the service from the registry. For SAP, this means stop sending out the periodic broadcast. This is an NOP for the DNS namespace. For persistent data stores this means deleting address information.
RNRSERVICE_DELETE	Delete the service from dynamic name and persistent spaces. For services represented by multiple CSADDR_INFO structures (using the SERVICE_MULTIPLE flag), only the specified address will be deleted, and this must match exactly the corresponding CSADDR_INFO structure that was specified when the service was registered.

[in] dwControlFlags

Service install flags value that further controls the operation performed of the WSASetService function. The possible values for this parameter are defined in the Winsock2.h header file.

Flag	Meaning
SERVICE_MULTIPLE	Controls scope of operation. When this flag is not set, service addresses are managed as a group. A register or removal from the registry invalidates all existing addresses before adding the given address set. When set, the action is only performed on the given address set. A register does not invalidate existing addresses and a removal from the registry only invalidates the given set of addresses.

Flag

Meaning

SERVICE_MULTIPLE

Controls scope of operation. When this flag is not set, service addresses are managed as a group. A register or removal from the registry invalidates all existing addresses before adding the given address set. When set, the action is only performed on the given address set. A register does not invalidate existing addresses and a removal from the registry only invalidates the given set of addresses.

Return value

The return value for WSASetService is zero if the operation was successful. Otherwise, the value SOCKET_ERROR is returned, and a specific error number can be retrieved by calling WSAGetLastError.

Error code	Meaning
WSAEACCES	The calling routine does not have sufficient privileges to install the Service.
WSAEINVAL	One or more required parameters were invalid or missing.
WSANOTINITIALISED	The Ws2_32.dll has not been initialized. The application must first call WSAStartup before calling any Windows Sockets functions.
WSA_NOT_ENOUGH_MEMORY	There was insufficient memory to perform the operation.

Remarks

The WSASetService function can be used to affect a specific namespace provider, all providers associated with a specific namespace, or all providers across all namespaces.

The available values for essOperation and dwControlFlags combine to control operation of the WSASetService function as shown in the following table.

Operation	Flags	Service already exists	Service does not exist
RNRSERVICE_REGISTER	None	Overwrites the object. Uses only addresses specified. The object is REGISTERED.	Creates a new object. Uses only addresses specified. Object is REGISTERED.
RNRSERVICE_REGISTER	SERVICE_MULTIPLE	Updates the object. Adds new addresses to the existing set. The object is REGISTERED.	Creates a new object. Uses all addresses specified. Object is REGISTERED.
RNRSERVICE_DEREGISTER	None	Removes all addresses, but does not remove the object from the namespace. The object is removed from the registry.	WSASERVICE_NOT_FOUND
RNRSERVICE_DEREGISTER	SERVICE_MULTIPLE	Updates the object. Removes only addresses that are specified. Only marks the object as DEREGISTERED if no addresses are present. Does not remove the object from the namespace.	WSASERVICE_NOT_FOUND
RNRSERVICE_DELETE	None	Removes the object from the namespace.	WSASERVICE_NOT_FOUND
RNRSERVICE_DELETE	SERVICE_MULTIPLE	Removes only addresses that are specified. Only removes object from the namespace if no addresses remain.	WSASERVICE_NOT_FOUND

Publishing services to directories, such as Active Directory Services, is restricted based on access control lists (ACLs). For more information, see Security Issues for Service Publication.

When the dwControlFlags parameter is set to SERVICE_MULTIPLE, an application can manage its addresses independently. This is useful when the application wants to manage its protocols individually or when the service resides on more than one computer. For instance, when a service uses more than one protocol, it may find that one listening socket aborts but the other sockets remain operational. In this case, the service could remove the aborted address from the registry without affecting the other addresses.

When the dwControlFlags parameter is set to SERVICE_MULTIPLE, an application must not let stale addresses remain in the object. This can happen if the application aborts without issuing a DEREGISTER request. When a service registers, it should store its addresses. On its next invocation, the service should explicitly remove these old stale addresses from the registry before registering new addresses.

Note If ANSI character strings are used, there is a chance that the WSAQUERYSET data in lpqsRegInfo may not contain any results after this function returns. This is because the ANSI version of this method, WSASetServiceA, converts the ANSI data in WSAQUERYSET to Unicode internally, but does not convert the results back to ANSI. This primarily impacts transports that return a "service record handle" used to uniquely identify a record. To work around this issue, applications should use Unicode string data in WSAQUERYSET when calling this function.

Service Properties

The following table describes how service property data is represented in a WSAQUERYSET structure. Fields labeled as (Optional) can contain a null pointer.

WSAQUERYSET member	Service property description
dwSize	Must be set to sizeof (WSAQUERYSET). This is a versioning mechanism.
dwOutputFlags	Not applicable and ignored.
lpszServiceInstanceName	Referenced string contains the service instance name.
lpServiceClassId	The GUID corresponding to this service class.
lpVersion	(Optional) Supplies service instance version number.
lpszComment	(Optional) An optional comment string.
dwNameSpace	See table that follows.
lpNSProviderId	See table that follows.
lpszContext	(Optional) Specifies the starting point of the query in a hierarchical namespace.
dwNumberOfProtocols	Ignored.
lpafpProtocols	Ignored.
lpszQueryString	Ignored.
dwNumberOfCsAddrs	The number of elements in the array of CSADDR_INFO structures referenced by lpcsaBuffer.
lpcsaBuffer	A pointer to an array of CSADDR_INFO structures that contain the address(es) that the service is listening on.
lpBlob	(Optional) This is a pointer to a provider-specific entity.

As illustrated in the following, the combination of the dwNameSpace and lpNSProviderId members determine that namespace providers are affected by this function.

dwNameSpace	lpNSProviderId	Scope of impact
Ignored	Non-null	The specified name-space provider.
A valid name- space identifier	Null	All name-space providers that support the indicated namespace.
NS_ALL	Null	All name-space providers.

Windows Phone 8: The WSASetServiceW function is supported for Windows Phone Store apps on Windows Phone 8 and later.

Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2: The WSASetServiceW function is supported for Windows Store apps on Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2, and later.

Note

The winsock2.h header defines WSASetService as an alias that automatically selects the ANSI or Unicode version of this function based on the definition of the UNICODE preprocessor constant. Mixing usage of the encoding-neutral alias with code that is not encoding-neutral can lead to mismatches that result in compilation or runtime errors. For more information, see Conventions for Function Prototypes.

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Minimum supported client	Windows 8.1, Windows Vista [desktop apps \| UWP apps]
Minimum supported server	Windows Server 2003 [desktop apps \| UWP apps]
Target Platform	Windows
Header	winsock2.h
Library	Ws2_32.lib
DLL	Ws2_32.dll

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