I wanted to make a simple wrapper class around winsock that programmers could use in order to obtain information about a certain host. The programmer can easily do the following with my wrapper class.

[source lang="cpp"]int main()
{
CHostInfo hostInfo;
// winsock initialize
if (hostInfo.Initialize() == false)
{
// initialization of winsock failed
return -1;
}
// obtain host information using winsock
LPHOSTENT lpHostEnt = hostInfo.GetHostInfo("www.google.com");
if ( lpHostEnt == NULL )
{
// winsock failed to obtain host information
return -1;
}
return 0;
}
[/source]


My class hides the details of winsock initialization and other function behind the scenes and avoids users from the details of Winsock. I'm not quite sure on the recommended method for returning error information to the caller of my wrappers functions. ATM i simply return bool for success and failure. I would like to return the WSAGetLastError() code instead. Does anyone have any recommended advice on the approach i should take?

Methods i thought of
-------------------------
1.) Simply have a variable in the class that holds the error code
2.) Simply have a function that calls WSAGetLastError() like so

int CHostInfo::GetWinSockError()
{
return WSAGetLastError();
}

I know the above are valid options but not sure if one is better then the other or if any other better methods exist

In summary, What method is recommended in order to shield users from the WINSOCK API and use my wrapper class API and yet still get valuable information back when an error occurs in the winsock functions? thanks!