How can I send messages to an existing Unix socket from Erlang? - erlang

Question

I see that gen_udp has support for Unix sockets, and this example shows creating an using one in Erlang.
I want to send messages to an existing Unix socket (to control mpv via its JSON IPC interface). I see there was a self-answered question on the Erlang mailing list about this, but the answer doesn't make sense to me, as Sock2 is used without previous assignment.
I see in the gen_udp docs this option:
{fd, integer() >= 0}
If a socket has somehow been opened without using gen_udp,
use this option to pass the file descriptor for it.
But when I try to open the socket as a file with file:open/2, I get {error,eopnotsupp}.
How can I send messages to an existing Unix socket?

Answer 1

Answer for my case
This will not be a canonical and thorough answer, because I'm not super familiar with sockets. However, I emailed Joe from the mailing list link above, and he said:
As far as I understand, the unix socket type to erlang module mapping
is as follows:
SOCK_STREAM -> gen_tcp
SOCK_DGRAM -> gen_udp
SOCK_SEQPACKET -> gen_sctp
He suggested using gen_tcp:connect in my case, and it worked! Apparently, mpv created a SOCK_STREAM socket.
So, having started mpv like:
mpv /Users/me/playlist.m3u --input-ipc-server=/tmp/mpv.sock --idle yes --no-audio-display
... so that it expects commands on the socket /tmp/mpv.sock, I could send it a "play a different playlist" command like this in erl:
{ok, Port} = gen_tcp:connect({local, "/tmp/mpv.sock"}, 0, [local]).
Msg = "{ \"command\": [\"loadlist\", \"/Users/me/playlist2.m3u\", \"replace\"] }\n".
gen_tcp:send(Port, Msg).